Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 October 19

Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS Flys Away
Image Credit & Copyright: Xingyang Cai

Explanation: These six panels follow daily apparitions of comet C/2023
A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS as it moved away from our fair planet during the
past week. The images were taken with the same camera and lens at the
indicated dates and locations from California, planet Earth. At far
right on October 12 the visitor from the distant Oort cloud was near
its closest approach, some 70 million kilometers (about 4
light-minutes) away. Its bright coma and long dust tail were close on
the sky to the setting Sun but still easy to spot against a bright
western horizon. Over the following days, the outbound comet steadily
climbs above the ecliptic and north into the darker western evening
sky, but begins to fade from view. Crossing the Earth's orbital plane
around October 14, Tsuchinshan-ATLAS exhibits a noticeable antitail
extended toward the western horizon. Higher in the evening sky at
sunset by October 17 (far left) the comet has faded and reached a
distance of around 77 million kilometers from planet Earth. Hopefully
you enjoyed some of Tsuchinshan-ATLAS's bid to become the best comet of
2024. This comet's initial orbital period estimates were a mere 80,000
years, but in fact it may never return to the inner Solar System.

Growing Gallery: Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS in 2024
Tomorrow's picture: a simulated universe
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply.
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 October 20
A complicated web of dark filaments is seen against a light background.
When many filmaments intersect, an orange spot is seen. Please see the
explanation for more detailed information.

Dark Matter in a Simulated Universe
Illustration Credit & Copyright: Tom Abel & Ralf Kaehler (KIPAC, SLAC),
AMNH

Explanation: Is our universe haunted? It might look that way on this
dark matter map. The gravity of unseen dark matter is the leading
explanation for why galaxies rotate so fast, why galaxies orbit
clusters so fast, why gravitational lenses so strongly deflect light,
and why visible matter is distributed as it is both in the local
universe and on the cosmic microwave background. The featured image
from the American Museum of Natural History's Hayden Planetarium Space
Show Dark Universe highlights one example of how pervasive dark matter
might haunt our universe. In this frame from a detailed computer
simulation, complex filaments of dark matter, shown in black, are
strewn about the universe like spider webs, while the relatively rare
clumps of familiar baryonic matter are colored orange. These
simulations are good statistical matches to astronomical observations.
In what is perhaps a scarier turn of events, dark matter -- although
quite strange and in an unknown form -- is no longer thought to be the
strangest source of gravity in the universe. That honor now falls to
dark energy, a more uniform source of repulsive gravity that seems to
now dominate the expansion of the entire universe.

Explore Your Universe: Random APOD Generator
Tomorrow's picture: anti-comet
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply.
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 October 21
A starfield is shown with a bright comet. The main tail of the comet
points diagonally to the upper left, while a thin anti-tail points to
the lower right. Mountain peaks are visible at the bottom in the
foreground. Please see the explanation for more detailed information.

Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS over California
Credit & Copyright: Brian Fulda

Explanation: The tails of Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS were a sight to
behold. Pictured, C/2023 A3 (TsuchinshanCÇôATLAS) was captured near peak
impressiveness last week over the Eastern Sierra Mountains in
California, USA. The comet not only showed a bright tail, but a
distinct anti-tail pointing in nearly the opposite direction. The
globular star cluster M5 can be seen on the right, far in the distance.
As it approached, it was unclear if this crumbling iceberg would
disintegrate completely as it warmed in the bright sunlight. In
reality, the comet survived to become brighter than any star in the
night (magnitude -4.9), but unfortunately was then so nearly in front
of the Sun that it was hard for many casual observers to locate.
Whether Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas becomes known as the Great Comet of
2024 now depends, in part, on how impressive incoming comet C/2024 S1
(ATLAS) becomes over the next two weeks.

Your Sky Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday?
(post 1995)
Tomorrow's picture: star pillars
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply.
NASA Web Privacy, Accessibility, Notices;
A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC,
NASA Science Activation
& Michigan Tech. U.

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Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 October 22
Three large interstellar dust pillars are shown against a starfield and
a multicolored glowing background. Please see the explanation for more
detailed information.

M16: Pillars of Star Creation
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Processing: Diego Pisano

Explanation: These dark pillars may look destructive, but they are
creating stars. This pillar-capturing picture of the Eagle Nebula
combines visible light exposures taken with the Hubble Space Telescope
with infrared images taken with the James Webb Space Telescope to
highlight evaporating gaseous globules (EGGs) emerging from pillars of
molecular hydrogen gas and dust. The giant pillars are light years in
length and are so dense that interior gas contracts gravitationally to
form stars. At each pillar's end, the intense radiation of bright young
stars causes low density material to boil away, leaving stellar
nurseries of dense EGGs exposed. The Eagle Nebula, associated with the
open star cluster M16, lies about 7000 light years away.

Jigsaw Challenge: Astronomy Puzzle of the Day
Tomorrow's picture: rocket catch
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply.
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 October 23

Mechazilla has caught the Super Heavy booster!

Credit & Copyright: SpaceX

Explanation: What if a rocket could return to its launch tower -- and
be caught? This happened for the first time 10 days ago, after a SpaceX
Starship rocket blasted off from its pad in Boca Chica, Texas, USA.
Starship then split, as planned, with its upper stage landing in the
Pacific Ocean. The big difference was the lower stage, Super Heavy
Booster 12, was caught by its launch tower about 7 minutes later.
Catching a rocket for reuse is a new and innovative way to help reduce
the cost of rocket flight by making rockets more easily reusable.
Starship rockets may be used by NASA in the future to send spacecraft
to Earth orbit, the Moon, and even other planets.

Tomorrow's picture: open space
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply.
NASA Web Privacy, Accessibility, Notices;
A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC,
NASA Science Activation
& Michigan Tech. U.

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Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 October 24

NGC 7293: The Helix Nebula
Image Credit & Copyright: Patrick Winkler

Explanation: A mere seven hundred light years from Earth toward the
constellation Aquarius, a star is dying. The once sun-like star's last
few thousand years have produced the Helix Nebula. Also known as NGC
7293, the cosmic Helix is a well studied and nearby example of a
Planetary Nebula, typical of this final phase of stellar evolution.
Combining narrow band data from emission lines of hydrogen atoms in red
and oxygen atoms in blue-green hues, this deep image shows tantalizing
details of the Helix, including its bright inner region about 3
light-years across. The white dot at the Helix's center is this
Planetary Nebula's hot, dying central star. A simple looking nebula at
first glance, the Helix is now understood to have a surprisingly
complex geometry.

Tomorrow's picture: pixels in space
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply.
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 October 25

Globular Star Cluster NGC 6752
Image Credit & Copyright: Massimo Di Fusco, Aygen Erkaslan

Explanation: Some 13,000 light-years away toward the southern
constellation Pavo, the globular star cluster NGC 6752 roams the halo
of our Milky Way galaxy. Over 10 billion years old, NGC 6752 follows
clusters Omega Centauri, 47 Tucanae, and Messier 22 as the fourth
brightest globular in planet Earth's night sky. It holds over 100
thousand stars in a sphere about 100 light-years in diameter.
Telescopic explorations of NGC 6752 have found that a remarkable
fraction of the stars near the cluster's core, are multiple star
systems. They also reveal the presence of blue straggle stars, stars
which appear to be too young and massive to exist in a cluster whose
stars are all expected to be at least twice as old as the Sun. The blue
stragglers are thought to be formed by star mergers and collisions in
the dense stellar environment at the cluster's core. This sharp color
composite also features the cluster's ancient red giant stars in
yellowish hues. (Note: The bright, spiky blue star about 8 o'clock from
the cluster center is a foreground star along the line-of-sight to NGC
6752)

Tomorrow's picture: pixels in space
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply.
NASA Web Privacy Policy and Important Notices
A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC,
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 October 26

Phantoms in Cassiopeia
Image Credit & Copyright: Christophe Vergnes, Herv+¬ Laur

Explanation: These brightly outlined flowing shapes look ghostly on a
cosmic scale. A telescopic view toward the constellation Cassiopeia,
the colorful skyscape features the swept-back, comet-shaped clouds IC
59 (left) and IC 63. About 600 light-years distant, the clouds aren't
actually ghosts. They are slowly disappearing though, under the
influence of energetic radiation from hot, luminous star gamma Cas.
Gamma Cas is physically located only 3 to 4 light-years from the
nebulae and lies just above the right edge of the frame. Slightly
closer to gamma Cas, IC 63 is dominated by red H-alpha light emitted as
hydrogen atoms ionized by the hot star's ultraviolet radiation
recombine with electrons. Farther from the star, IC 59 shows less
H-alpha emission but more of the characteristic blue tint of dust
reflected star light. The field of view spans over 1 degree or 10
light-years at the estimated distance of the interstellar apparitions.

Tomorrow's picture: bats in space
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply.
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 October 27
A starfield is shown with a large brown dust nebula in the center. The
nebula appears, to some, to be shaped like a bat. One of the stars in
the dust nebula even appears to be the eye of the bat. Please see the
explanation for more detailed information.

LDN 43: The Cosmic Bat Nebula
Credit & Copyright: Mark Hanson and Mike Selby; Text: Michelle Thaller
(NASA's GSFC)

Explanation: What is the most spook-tacular nebula in the galaxy? One
contender is LDN 43, which bears an astonishing resemblance to a vast
cosmic bat flying amongst the stars on a dark Halloween night. Located
about 1400 light years away in the constellation Ophiuchus, this
molecular cloud is dense enough to block light not only from background
stars, but from wisps of gas lit up by the nearby reflection nebula LBN
7. Far from being a harbinger of death, this 12-light year-long
filament of gas and dust is actually a stellar nursery. Glowing with
eerie light, the bat is lit up from inside by dense gaseous knots that
have just formed young stars.

Your Sky Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday?
(post 1995)
Tomorrow's picture: amazing STEVE
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply.
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& Michigan Tech. U.

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Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 October 28
A night sky is shown with a bright red band running overhead. Above the
red band is a diffuse red glow. A path through a grassy filed is in the
foreground with a path going out toward the horizon. Please see the
explanation for more detailed information.

STEVE: A Glowing River over France
Credit & Copyright: Louis LEROUX-G+ëR+ë

Explanation: Sometimes a river of hot gas flows over your head. In this
case the river created a Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement
(STEVE) that glowed bright red, white, and pink. Details of how STEVEs
work remain a topic of research, but recent evidence holds that their
glow results from a fast-moving river of hot ions flowing over a
hundred kilometers up in the Earth's atmosphere: the ionosphere. The
more expansive dull red glow might be related to the flowing STEVE, but
alternatively might be a Stable Auroral Red (SAR) arc, a more general
heat-related glow. The featured picture, taken earlier this month in
C++te d'Opale, France, is a wide-angle digital composite made as the
STEVE arc formed nearly overhead. Although the apparition lasted only a
few minutes, this was long enough for the quick-thinking
astrophotographer to get in the picture -- can you find him?

Tomorrow's picture: webb stars
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply.
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NASA Science Activation
& Michigan Tech. U.

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Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 October 29
A starfield is shown featuring many stars in the center and many
pillars of interstellar dust around the edges pointing toward the
center. The main image is in infrared light, and a rollover image from
Hubble shows the same scene in visible light. Please see the
explanation for more detailed information.

NGC 602: Stars Versus Pillars from Webb
Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, P. Zeidler, E. Sabbi, A. Nota, M. Zamani
(ESA/Webb)

Explanation: The stars are destroying the pillars. More specifically,
some of the newly formed stars in the image center are emitting light
so energetic that is evaporating the gas and dust in the surrounding
pillars. Simultaneously, the pillars themselves are still trying to
form new stars. The whole setting is the star cluster NGC 602, and this
new vista was taken by the Webb Space Telescope in multiple infrared
colors. In comparison, a roll-over image shows the same star cluster in
visible light, taken previously by the Hubble Space Telescope. NGC 602
is located near the perimeter of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), a
small satellite galaxy of our Milky Way galaxy. At the estimated
distance of the SMC, the featured picture spans about 200 light-years.
A tantalizing assortment of background galaxies are also visible --
mostly around the edges -- that are at least hundreds of millions of
light-years beyond.

Tomorrow's picture: head space
__________________________________________________________________

Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply.
NASA Web Privacy, Accessibility, Notices;
A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC,
NASA Science Activation
& Michigan Tech. U.

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* Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (1:153/757)

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 October 30
A starfield is shown with a big light bubble in the center. A bright
star is toward the upper right in the translucent bubble. To some, the
bubble may resemble a skull. Please see the explanation for more
detailed information.

NGC 7635: The Bubble Nebula
Credit & Copyright: Chad Leader

Explanation: What created this huge space bubble? Blown by the wind
from a star, this tantalizing, head-like apparition is cataloged as NGC
7635, but known simply as the Bubble Nebula. The featured striking view
utilizes a long exposure to reveal the intricate details of this cosmic
bubble and its environment. Although it looks delicate, the 10
light-year diameter bubble offers evidence of violent processes at
work. Seen here above and right of the Bubble's center, a bright hot
star is embedded in the nebula's reflecting dust. A fierce stellar wind
and intense radiation from the star, which likely has a mass 10 to 20
times that of the Sun, has blasted out the structure of glowing gas
against denser material in a surrounding molecular cloud. The
intriguing Bubble Nebula lies a mere 11,000 light-years away toward the
boastful constellation Cassiopeia.

Your Sky Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday?
(post 1995)
Tomorrow's picture: All Hallow's Eve
__________________________________________________________________

Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply.
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NASA Science Activation
& Michigan Tech. U.

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Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 October 31

Rigel and the Witch Head Nebula
Image Credit & Copyright: Simone Curzi

Explanation: By starlight, this eerie visage shines in the dark with a
crooked profile evoking its popular name, the Witch Head Nebula. In
fact, this entrancing telescopic portrait gives the impression that a
witch has fixed her gaze on Orion's bright supergiant star Rigel. More
formally known as IC 2118, the Witch Head Nebula spans about 50
light-years and is composed of interstellar dust grains reflecting
Rigel's starlight. The color of the Witch Head Nebula is caused not
only by Rigel's intense blue light, but because the dust grains scatter
blue light more efficiently than red. The same physical process causes
Earth's daytime sky to appear blue, although the scatterers in Earth's
atmosphere are molecules of nitrogen and oxygen. Rigel and this dusty
cosmic crone are about 800 light-years away. You may still see a few
witches in your neighborhood tonight though, so have a safe and Happy
Halloween!

Tomorrow's picture: pixels in space
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply.
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 November 1

Spiral Galaxy NGC 6744
Image Credit & Copyright: John Hayes

Explanation: Big, beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 6744 is nearly 175,000
light-years across, larger than our own Milky Way. It lies some 30
million light-years distant in the southern constellation Pavo but
appears as only a faint smudge in the eyepiece of a small telescope. We
see the disk of the nearby island universe tilted towards our line of
sight in this remarkably deep and detailed galaxy portrait, a
telescopic image that spans an area about the angular size of a full
moon. In it, the giant galaxy's elongated yellowish core is dominated
by the light from old, cool stars. Beyond the core, grand spiral arms
are filled with young blue star clusters and speckled with pinkish star
forming regions. An extended arm sweeps past smaller satellite galaxy
NGC 6744A at the upper left. NGC 6744's galactic companion is
reminiscent of the Milky Way's satellite galaxy the Large Magellanic
Cloud.

Tomorrow's picture: light-weekend
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply.
NASA Web Privacy Policy and Important Notices
A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC,
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* Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (1:153/757)

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 November 2

Saturn at Night
Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, Space Science Institute, Mindaugas
Macijauskas

Explanation: Saturn is bright in Earth's night skies. Telescopic views
of the outer gas giant planet and its beautiful rings often make it a
star at star parties. But this stunning view of Saturn's rings and
night side just isn't possible from telescopes in the vicinity of
planet Earth. Peering out from the inner Solar System they can only
bring Saturn's day side into view. In fact, this image of Saturn's
slender sunlit crescent with night's shadow cast across its broad and
complex ring system was captured by the Cassini spacecraft. A robot
spacecraft from planet Earth, Cassini called Saturn orbit home for 13
years before it was directed to dive into the atmosphere of the gas
giant on September 15, 2017. This magnificent mosaic is composed of
frames recorded by Cassini's wide-angle camera only two days before its
grand final plunge. Saturn's night will not be seen again until another
spaceship from Earth calls.

Tomorrow's picture: gaze into the abyss
__________________________________________________________________

Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply.
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& Michigan Tech. U.

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Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 November 3
Swirling clouds on the planet Jupiter are pictured, mostly in white,
tan, and light blue. A dark spot appears in the center surrounded by
swirling white and blue clouds. Please see the explanation for more
detailed information.

Jupiter Abyss
Image Credit: NASA, Juno, SwRI, MSSS; Processing & License: Gerald
Eichst+ñdt & Sean Doran

Explanation: What's that black spot on Jupiter? No one is sure. During
one pass of NASA's Juno over Jupiter, the robotic spacecraft imaged an
usually dark cloud feature informally dubbed the Abyss. Surrounding
cloud patterns show the Abyss to be at the center of a vortex. Since
dark features on Jupiter's atmosphere tend to run deeper than light
features, the Abyss may really be the deep hole that it appears -- but
without more evidence that remains conjecture. The Abyss is surrounded
by a complex of meandering clouds and other swirling storm systems,
some of which are topped by light colored, high-altitude clouds. The
featured image was captured in 2019 while Juno passed only about 15,000
kilometers above Jupiter's cloud tops. The next close pass of Juno near
Jupiter will be in about three weeks.

Tomorrow's picture: orion the great
__________________________________________________________________

Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply.
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A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC,
NASA Science Activation
& Michigan Tech. U.

--- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Toy-7
* Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (1:153/757)

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 November 4
A starfield is shown with a nebula glowing in red, purple, and blue.
Dark brown gas is also seen on the lower left. A small cluster of stars
appears in the center. Please see the explanation for more detailed
information.

M42: The Great Nebula in Orion
Credit & Copyright: F+¬nyes L+|r+índ

Explanation: The Great Nebula in Orion, an immense, nearby starbirth
region, is probably the most famous of all astronomical nebulas. Here,
glowing gas surrounds hot young stars at the edge of an immense
interstellar molecular cloud only 1500 light-years away. In the
featured deep image in assigned colors highlighted by emission in
oxygen and hydrogen, wisps and sheets of dust and gas are particularly
evident. The Great Nebula in Orion can be found with the unaided eye
near the easily identifiable belt of three stars in the popular
constellation Orion. In addition to housing a bright open cluster of
stars known as the Trapezium, the Orion Nebula contains many stellar
nurseries. These nurseries contain much hydrogen gas, hot young stars,
proplyds, and stellar jets spewing material at high speeds. Also known
as M42, the Orion Nebula spans about 40 light years and is located in
the same spiral arm of our Galaxy as the Sun.

Tomorrow's picture: galaxy watchers
__________________________________________________________________

Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply.
NASA Web Privacy, Accessibility, Notices;
A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC,
NASA Science Activation
& Michigan Tech. U.

--- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Toy-7
* Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (1:153/757)

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 November 5
A grassy hill appears in the foreground with tall statues of human
heads embeddd. High overhead the central band of the Milky Way galaxy
crosses horizontally. Above the Milky Way is a dark sky filled with
stars. Please see the explanation for more detailed information.

Milky Way over Easter Island
Credit & Copyright: Josh Dury

Explanation: Why were the statues on Easter Island built? No one is
sure. What is sure is that over 900 large stone statues called moais
exist there. The Rapa Nui (Easter Island) moais stand, on average, over
twice as tall as a person and have over 200 times as much mass. It is
thought that the unusual statues were created about 600 years ago in
the images of local leaders of a vibrant and ancient civilization. Rapa
Nui has been declared by UNESCO to a World Heritage Site. Pictured
here, some of the stone giants were imaged last month under the central
band of our Milky Way galaxy. Previously unknown moais are still being
discovered.

Alternative Multi-APOD Front Page: MyUniverseHub.com
Tomorrow's picture: comet mountain
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 November 6
A town is shown in the foreground surrounded by tall mountains with
even taller mountains in the distance. Above them all is a bright white
streak that is a comet with both a tail and an anti-tail. High above
are stars in the night sky. Please see the explanation for more
detailed information.

Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas over the Dolomites
Credit & Copyright: Alessandra Masi

Explanation: Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas is now headed back to the outer
Solar System. The massive dusty snowball put on quite a show during its
trip near the Sun, resulting in many impressive pictures from planet
Earth during October. The featured image was taken in mid-October and
shows a defining visual feature of the comet -- its impressive
anti-tail. The image captures Comet C/2023 A3 (TsuchinshanCÇôATLAS) with
impressively long dust and ion tails pointing up and away from the Sun,
while the strong anti-tail -- composed of more massive dust particles
-- trails the comet and points down and (nearly) toward the
recently-set Sun. In the foreground is village of Tai di Cadore, Italy,
with the tremendous Dolomite Mountains in the background. Another
comet, C/2024 S1 (ATLAS), once a candidate to rival Comet
Tsuchinshan-Atlas in brightness, broke up last week during its close
approach to our Sun.

Growing Gallery: Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS in 2024
Tomorrow's picture: open space
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 November 7

Shell Galaxies in Pisces
Image Credit & Copyright: George Williams

Explanation: This spectacular intergalactic skyscape features Arp 227,
a curious system of galaxies from the 1966 Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies.
Some 100 million light-years distant within the boundaries of the
constellation Pisces, Arp 227 consists of the two galaxies prominent
above and left of center, the shell galaxy NGC 474 and its blue,
spiral-armed neighbor NGC 470. The readily apparent shells and star
streams of NGC 474 are likely tidal features originating from the
accretion of another smaller galaxy during close gravitational
encounters that began over a billion years ago. The large galaxy on the
bottom righthand side of the deep image, NGC 467, appears to be
surrounded by faint shells and streams too, evidence of another merging
galaxy system. Intriguing background galaxies are scattered around the
field that also includes spiky foreground stars. Of course, those stars
lie well within our own Milky Way Galaxy. The telescopic field of view
spans 25 arc minutes or just under 1/2 degree on the sky.

Tomorrow's picture: pixels in space
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 November 8

Helping Hand in Cassiopeia
Image Credit & Copyright: Francesco Radici

Explanation: Drifting near the plane of our Milky Way galaxy these
dusty molecular clouds seem to extend a helping hand on a cosmic scale.
Part of a local complex of star-forming interstellar clouds they
include LDN 1358, 1357, and 1355 from American astronomer Beverly
Lynds' 1962 Catalog of Dark Nebulae. Presenting a challenging target
for astro-imagers, the obscuring dark nebulae are nearly 3,000
light-years away, toward rich starfields in the northern constellation
Cassiopeia. At that distance, this deep, telescopic field of view would
span about 80 light-years.

Tomorrow's picture: light-weekend
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2024 November 9

Neptune at Night
Image Credit & Copyright: Voyager 2, NASA

Explanation: Ice giant Neptune is faint in Earth's night sky. Some 30
times farther from the Sun than our fair planet, telescopes are needed
to catch a glimpse of the dim and distant world. This dramatic view of
Neptune's night just isn't possible for telescopes in the vicinity of
planet Earth though. Peering out from the inner Solar System they can
only bring Neptune's day side into view. In fact this night side image
with Neptune's slender crescent next to the crescent of its large moon
Triton was captured by Voyager 2. Launched from planet Earth in 1977
the Voyager 2 spacecraft made a close fly by of the Solar System's
outermost planet in 1989, looking back on Neptune as the robotic
spacecraft continued its voyage to interstellar space.

Tomorrow's picture: Valles Marineris
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2024 November 10
A picture of Mars is shown as a large orange globe. Across the center
of the planet a long canyon is visible. Please see the explanation for
more detailed information.

Valles Marineris: The Grand Canyon of Mars
Image Credit: NASA, USGS, Viking Project

Explanation: The largest canyon in the Solar System cuts a wide swath
across the face of Mars. Named Valles Marineris, the grand valley
extends over 3,000 kilometers long, spans as much as 600 kilometers
across, and delves as much as 8 kilometers deep. By comparison, the
Earth's Grand Canyon in Arizona, USA is 800 kilometers long, 30
kilometers across, and 1.8 kilometers deep. The origin of the Valles
Marineris remains unknown, although a leading hypothesis holds that it
started as a crack billions of years ago as the planet cooled. Several
geologic processes have been identified in the canyon. The featured
mosaic was created from over 100 images of Mars taken by Viking
Orbiters in the 1970s.

Tomorrow's picture: comet tails
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2024 November 11
A starfield is shown that includes a bright comet. A bright tail points
to the upper right but has an unusual dark streak in it. A thin
anti-tail points toward the lower left. Please see the explanation for
more detailed information.

The Unusual Tails of Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas
Image Credit & Copyright: Bray Falls

Explanation: What created an unusual dark streak in Comet
Tsuchinshan-Atlas's tail? Some images of the bright comet during
mid-October not only caught its impressively long tail and its thin
anti-tail, but a rather unexpected feature: a dark streak in the long
tail. The reason for the dark streak is currently unclear and a topic
of some debate. Possible reasons include a plume of dark dust,
different parts of the bright tail being unusually superposed, and a
shadow of a dense part of the coma on smaller dust particles. The
streak is visible in the featured image taken on October 14 from Texas,
USA. To help future analyses, if you have taken a good image of the
comet that clearly shows this dark streak, please send it in to APOD.
Comet TsuchinshanCÇôATLAS has now faded considerably and is returning to
the outer Solar System.

Gallery: Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS in 2024
Tomorrow's picture: cosmic crescent
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2024 November 12
A starfield is shown with a unusual textured nebula in the center
colored in brown with blue trimmings. Diffuse red nebula appear around
the edges. In the center is an opaque brown object. Please see the
explanation for more detailed information.

NGC 6888: The Crescent Nebula
Image Credit & Copyright: Team ARO

Explanation: How was the Crescent Nebula created? Looking like an
emerging space cocoon, the Crescent Nebula, visible in the center of
the featured image, was created by the brightest star in its center. A
leading progenitor hypothesis has the Crescent Nebula beginning to form
about 250,000 years ago. At that time, the massive central star had
evolved to become a Wolf-Rayet star (WR 136), shedding its outer
envelope in a strong stellar wind, ejecting the equivalent of our Sun's
mass every 10,000 years. This wind impacted surrounding gas left over
from a previous phase, compacting it into a series of complex shells,
and lighting it up. The Crescent Nebula, also known as NGC 6888, lies
about 4,700 light-years away in the constellation of Cygnus. Star WR
136 will probably undergo a supernova explosion sometime in the next
million years.

Jigsaw Challenge: Astronomy Puzzle of the Day
Tomorrow's picture: open space
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 November 13

Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1365 from Webb
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Janice Lee (NOIRLab) - Processing: Alyssa
Pagan (STScI)

Explanation: A mere 56 million light-years distant toward the southern
constellation Fornax, NGC 1365 is an enormous barred spiral galaxy
about 200,000 light-years in diameter. That's twice the size of our own
barred spiral Milky Way. This sharp image from the James Webb Space
Telescope's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) reveals stunning details of
this magnificent spiral in infrared light. Webb's field of view
stretches about 60,000 light-years across NGC 1365, exploring the
galaxy's core and bright newborn star clusters. The intricate network
of dusty filaments and bubbles is created by young stars along spiral
arms winding from the galaxy's central bar. Astronomers suspect the
gravity field of NGC 1365's bar plays a crucial role in the galaxy's
evolution, funneling gas and dust into a star-forming maelstrom and
ultimately feeding material into the active galaxy's central,
supermassive black hole.

Tomorrow's picture: the light, the dark, and the dusty
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2024 November 14

IC 348 and Barnard 3
Image Credit & Copyright: Ashraf Abu Sara

Explanation: A great nebulous region near bright star omicron Persei
offers this study in cosmic contrasts. Captured in the telescopic frame
the colorful complex of dust, gas, and stars spans about 3 degrees on
the sky along the edge of the Perseus molecular cloud some 1000
light-years away. Surrounded by a bluish halo of dust reflected
starlight, omicron Persei itself is just left of center. Immediately
below it lies the intriguing young star cluster IC 348 recently
explored by the James Webb Space Telescope. In silhouette against the
diffuse reddish glow of hydrogen gas, dark and obscuring interstellar
dust cloud Barnard 3 is at upper right. Of course the cosmic dust also
tends to hide newly formed stars and young stellar objects or
protostars from prying optical telescopes. At the Perseus molecular
cloud's estimated distance, this field of view would span about 50
light-years.

Tomorrow's picture: pixels in space
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2024 November 15

Apollo 12 and Surveyor 3
Image Credit: NASA, Apollo 12, Alan Bean - Stereo Image Copyright:
Kevin Frank

Explanation: Put on your red/blue glasses and gaze across the western
Ocean of Storms on the surface of the Moon. The 3D anaglyph features
Apollo 12 astronaut Pete Conrad visiting the Surveyor 3 spacecraft in
November of 1969. Surveyor 3 had landed at the site on the inside slope
of a small crater about 2 1/2 years earlier in April of 1967. Visible
on the horizon beyond the far crater wall, Apollo 12's Lunar Module
Intrepid touched down less than 200 meters (650 feet) away, easy
moonwalking distance from the robotic Surveyor spacecraft. This stereo
image was carefully created from two separate pictures (AS12-48-7133,
AS12-48-7134) captured on the lunar surface. They depict the scene from
only slightly different viewpoints, approximating the separation
between human eyes.

Tomorrow's picture: Pluto at Night
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2024 November 16

Pluto at Night
Image Credit: NASA, Johns Hopkins Univ./APL, Southwest Research
Institute

Explanation: The night side of Pluto spans this shadowy scene. In the
stunning spacebased perspective the Sun is 4.9 billion kilometers
(almost 4.5 light-hours) behind the dim and distant world. It was
captured by far flung New Horizons in July of 2015 when the spacecraft
was at a range of some 21,000 kilometers from Pluto, about 19 minutes
after its closest approach. A denizen of the Kuiper Belt in dramatic
silhouette, the image also reveals Pluto's tenuous, surprisingly
complex layers of hazy atmosphere. Near the top of the frame the
crescent twilight landscape includes southern areas of nitrogen ice
plains now formally known as Sputnik Planitia and rugged mountains of
water-ice in the Norgay Montes.

Tomorrow's picture: windblown
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2024 November 17
A starfield is dominated by light brown dust. In the middle is a
parabolic gas cloud opening toward the lower right. A bright star is
near the center at the apex of the parabolic gas cloud. Please see the
explanation for more detailed information.

LDN 1471: A Windblown Star Cavity
Image Credit: Hubble, NASA, ESA; Processing & License: Judy Schmidt

Explanation: What is the cause of this unusual parabolic structure?
This illuminated cavity, known as LDN 1471, was created by a newly
forming star, seen as the bright source at the peak of the parabola.
This protostar is experiencing a stellar outflow which is then
interacting with the surrounding material in the Perseus Molecular
Cloud, causing it to brighten. We see only one side of the cavity --
the other side is hidden by dark dust. The parabolic shape is caused by
the widening of the stellar-wind blown cavity over time. Two additional
structures can also be seen either side of the protostar; these are
known as Herbig-Haro objects, again caused by the interaction of the
outflow with the surrounding material. What causes the striations on
the cavity walls, though, remains unknown. The featured image was taken
by NASA and ESACÇÖs Hubble Space Telescope after an original detection by
the Spitzer Space Telescope.

Explore Your Universe: Random APOD Generator
Tomorrow's picture: Bok Man
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2024 November 18
A blue glowing gas background shows numerous bright stars in the
foreground. A dark red dust nebula is also visible toward the image
center. Around the edges, dark dust clouds are also visible, sometime
colored tan and other times dark brown. Please see the explanation for
more detailed information.

Stars and Dust in the Pacman Nebula
Image Credit & Copyright: Malcolm Loro

Explanation: Stars can create huge and intricate dust sculptures from
the dense and dark molecular clouds from which they are born. The tools
the stars use to carve their detailed works are high energy light and
fast stellar winds. The heat they generate evaporates the dark
molecular dust as well as causing ambient hydrogen gas to disperse and
glow. Pictured here, a new open cluster of stars designated IC 1590 is
nearing completion around the intricate interstellar dust structures in
the emission nebula NGC 281, dubbed the Pac-man Nebula because of its
overall shape. The dust cloud just above center is classified as a Bok
Globule as it may gravitationally collapse and form a star -- or stars.
The Pacman Nebula lies about 10,000 light years away toward the
constellation of Cassiopeia.

Tomorrow's picture: pointing clouds
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2024 November 19
A series of white parallel clouds are seen going off into the distance
in a background blue sky. In the foreground is a hill with two domes at
the top. Please see the explanation for more detailed information.

Undulatus Clouds over Las Campanas Observatory
Image Credit & Copyright: Yuri Beletsky (Carnegie Las Campanas
Observatory, TWAN); h/t: Alice Allen

Explanation: What's happening with these clouds? While it may seem that
these long and thin clouds are pointing toward the top of a hill, and
that maybe a world-famous observatory is located there, only part of
that is true. In terms of clouds, the formation is a chance
superposition of impressively periodic undulating air currents in
Earth's lower atmosphere. Undulatus, a type of Asperitas cloud, form at
the peaks where the air is cool enough to cause the condensation of
opaque water droplets. The wide-angle nature of the panorama creates
the illusion that the clouds converge over the hill. In terms of land,
there really is a world-famous observatory at the top of that peak: the
Carnegie Science's Las Campanas Observatory in the Atacama Desert of
Chile. The two telescope domes visible are the 6.5-meter Magellan
Telescopes. The featured coincidental vista was a surprise but was
captured by the phone of a quick-thinking photographer in late
September.

Your Sky Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday?
(post 1995)
Tomorrow's picture: flight day 6
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 November 20

Earthset from Orion
Image Credit: NASA, Artemis 1

Explanation: Eight billion people are about to disappear in this
snapshot from space taken on 2022 November 21. On the sixth day of the
Artemis I mission, their home world is setting behind the Moon's bright
edge as viewed by an external camera on the outbound Orion spacecraft.
Orion was headed for a powered flyby that took it to within 130
kilometers of the lunar surface. Velocity gained in the flyby maneuver
was used to reach a distant retrograde orbit around the Moon. That
orbit is considered distant because it's another 92,000 kilometers
beyond the Moon, and retrograde because the spacecraft orbited in the
opposite direction of the Moon's orbit around planet Earth. Orion
entered its distant retrograde orbit on November 25. Swinging around
the Moon, Orion reached a maximum distance (just over 400,000
kilometers) from Earth on November 28, exceeding a record set by Apollo
13 for most distant spacecraft designed for human space exploration.
The Artemis II mission, carrying 4 astronauts around the moon and back
again, is scheduled to launch no earlier than September 2025.

Tomorrow's picture: pixels in space
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2024 November 21

The Elephant's Trunk in Cepheus
Image Credit: Image Credit & Copyright: Giorgio Ferrari

Explanation: Like an illustration in a galactic Just So Story, the
Elephant's Trunk Nebula winds through the emission region and young
star cluster complex IC 1396, in the high and far off constellation of
Cepheus. Also known as vdB 142, this cosmic elephant's trunk is over 20
light-years long. The detailed telescopic view features the bright
swept-back ridges and pockets of cool interstellar dust and gas that
abound in the region. But the dark, tendril-shaped clouds contain the
raw material for star formation and hide protostars within. Nearly
3,000 light-years distant, the relatively faint IC 1396 complex covers
a large region on the sky, spanning over 5 degrees. This rendition
spans a 1 degree wide field of view though, about the angular size of 2
full moons.

Tomorrow's picture: pixels in space
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2024 November 22

The Medusa Nebula
Image Credit & Copyright: Bruno Rota Sargi

Explanation: Braided and serpentine filaments of glowing gas suggest
this nebula's popular name, The Medusa Nebula. Also known as Abell 21,
this Medusa is an old planetary nebula some 1,500 light-years away in
the constellation Gemini. Like its mythological namesake, the nebula is
associated with a dramatic transformation. The planetary nebula phase
represents a final stage in the evolution of low mass stars like the
sun as they transform themselves from red giants to hot white dwarf
stars and in the process shrug off their outer layers. Ultraviolet
radiation from the hot star powers the nebular glow. The Medusa's
transforming star is the faint one near the center of the overall
bright crescent shape. In this deep telescopic view, fainter filaments
clearly extend below and to the left. The Medusa Nebula is estimated to
be over 4 light-years across.

Tomorrow's picture: light-weekend
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2024 November 23

Interplanetary Earth
Image Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA & NASA / JHU
Applied Physics Lab / Carnegie Inst. Washington

Explanation: In an interplanetary first, on July 19, 2013 Earth was
photographed on the same day from two other worlds of the Solar System,
innermost planet Mercury and ringed gas giant Saturn. Pictured on the
left, Earth is the pale blue dot just below the rings of Saturn, as
captured by the robotic Cassini spacecraft then orbiting the outermost
gas giant. On that same day people across planet Earth snapped many of
their own pictures of Saturn. On the right, the Earth-Moon system is
seen against the dark background of space as captured by the sunward
MESSENGER spacecraft, then in Mercury orbit. MESSENGER took its image
as part of a search for small natural satellites of Mercury, moons that
would be expected to be quite dim. In the MESSENGER image, the brighter
Earth and Moon are both overexposed and shine brightly with reflected
sunlight. Destined not to return to their home world, both Cassini and
MESSENGER have since retired from their missions of Solar System
exploration.

Tomorrow's picture: interstellar journey
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 November 24

Journey to the Center of the Galaxy
Video Credit: ESO/MPE/Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org)/VISTA/J.
Emerson/Digitized Sky Survey 2

Explanation: What lies at the center of our galaxy? In Jules Verne's
science fiction classic, A Journey to the Center of the Earth,
Professor Liedenbrock and his fellow explorers encounter many strange
and exciting wonders. Astronomers already know of some of the bizarre
objects that exist at our Galactic Center, including vast cosmic dust
clouds, bright star clusters, swirling rings of gas, and even a
supermassive black hole. Much of the Galactic Center is shielded from
our view in visible light by the intervening dust and gas, but it can
be explored using other forms of electromagnetic radiation. The
featured video is actually a digital zoom into the Milky Way's center
which starts by utilizing visible light images from the Digitized Sky
Survey. As the movie proceeds, the light shown shifts to
dust-penetrating infrared and highlights gas clouds that were recently
discovered in 2013 to be falling toward the central black hole.

Tomorrow's picture: dark horse
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2024 November 25
The top half glows red, while the bottom half is filled with dark dust.
Protruding into the red is a dark dust lane that resembles a horse's
head. Please see the explanation for more detailed information.

The Horsehead Nebula
Image Credit & Copyright: Alex Lin (Chilescope)

Explanation: One of the most identifiable nebulas in the sky, the
Horsehead Nebula in Orion, is part of a large, dark, molecular cloud.
Also known as Barnard 33, the unusual shape was first discovered on a
photographic plate in the late 1800s. The red glow originates from
hydrogen gas predominantly behind the nebula, ionized by the nearby
bright star Sigma Orionis. The darkness of the Horsehead is caused
mostly by thick dust, although the lower part of the Horsehead's neck
casts a shadow to the left. Streams of gas leaving the nebula are
funneled by a strong magnetic field. Bright spots in the Horsehead
Nebula's base are young stars just in the process of forming. Light
takes about 1,500 years to reach us from the Horsehead Nebula. The
featured image was taken from the Chilescope Observatory in the
mountains of Chile.

Tomorrow's picture: meteor races comet
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2024 November 26
The top panel shows a flat ring with a bright center in blue, even
though it was taken in near infrared light. The bottom panel shows the
same galaxy in visible light and shows a brighter and more expansive
center against which the flat ring appears dark. Please see the
explanation for more detailed information.

The Sombrero Galaxy from Webb and Hubble
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Hubble Heritage Project (STScI,
AURA)

Explanation: This floating ring is the size of a galaxy. In fact, it is
a galaxy -- or at least part of one: the photogenic Sombrero Galaxy is
one of the largest galaxies in the nearby Virgo Cluster of Galaxies.
The dark band of dust that obscures the mid-section of the Sombrero
Galaxy in visible light (bottom panel) actually glows brightly in
infrared light (top panel). The featured image shows the infrared glow
in false blue, recorded recently by the space-based James Webb Space
Telescope (JWST) and released yesterday, pictured above an archival
image taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in visible light. The
Sombrero Galaxy, also known as M104, spans about 50,000 light years and
lies 28 million light years away. M104 can be seen with a small
telescope in the direction of the constellation Virgo.

Tomorrow's picture: meteor races comet
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 November 27
A star-filled sky has two streaks in the foreground. A green and red
streak toward the lower left was created by an ablating meteor, while
the blue and white streak on the upper right is the coma and tail of a
comet. Please see the explanation for more detailed information.

The Meteor and the Comet
Image Credit & Copyright: Wang Hao; Processing: Song Wentao

Explanation: How different are these two streaks? The streak on the
upper right is Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas showing an impressive dust tail.
The comet is a large and dirty iceberg that entered the inner Solar
System and is shedding gas and dust as it is warmed by the Sun's light.
The streak on the lower left is a meteor showing an impressive
evaporation trail. The meteor is a small and cold rock that entered the
Earth's atmosphere and is shedding gas and dust as it is warmed by
molecular collisions. The meteor was likely once part of a comet or
asteroid -- perhaps later composing part of its tail. The meteor was
gone in a flash and was only caught by coincidence during a series of
exposures documenting the comet's long tail. The featured image was
captured just over a month ago from Sichuan Province in China.

Gallery: Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS in 2024
Tomorrow's picture: open space
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2024 November 28

NGC 206 and the Star Clouds of Andromeda
Image Credit & Copyright: Roberto Marinoni

Explanation: The large stellar association cataloged as NGC 206 is
nestled within the dusty arms of the neighboring Andromeda galaxy along
with the galaxy's pinkish star-forming regions. Also known as M31, the
spiral galaxy is a mere 2.5 million light-years away. NGC 206 is found
at the center of this sharp and detailed close-up of the southwestern
extent of Andromeda's disk. The bright, blue stars of NGC 206 indicate
its youth. In fact, its youngest massive stars are less than 10 million
years old. Much larger than the open or galactic clusters of young
stars in the disk of our Milky Way galaxy, NGC 206 spans about 4,000
light-years. That's comparable in size to the giant stellar nurseries
NGC 604 in nearby spiral M33 and the Tarantula Nebula in the Large
Magellanic Cloud.

Tomorrow's picture: star cluster of the Milky Way
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2024 November 29

Messier 4
Image Credit & Copyright: Steve Crouch

Explanation: Messier 4 can be found west of bright red-giant star
Antares, alpha star of the constellation Scorpius. M4 itself is only
just visible from dark sky locations, even though the globular cluster
of 100,000 stars or so is a mere 5,500 light-years away. Still, its
proximity to prying telescopic eyes makes it a prime target for
astronomical explorations. Recent studies have included Hubble
observations of M4's pulsating cepheid variable stars, cooling white
dwarf stars, and ancient, pulsar orbiting exoplanet PSR B1620-26 b.
This sharp image was captured with a small telescope on planet Earth.
At M4's estimated distance it spans about 50 light-years across the
core of the globular star cluster.

Tomorrow's picture: the climb
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2024 November 30

Winter and Summer on a Little Planet
Image Credit & Copyright: Camille Niel

Explanation: Winter and summer appear to come on a single night to this
stunning little planet. It's planet Earth of course. The digitally
mapped, nadir centered panorama covers 360x180 degrees and is composed
of frames recorded during January and July from the Col du Galibier in
the French Alps. Stars and nebulae of the northern winter (bottom) and
summer Milky Way form the complete arcs traversing the rugged, curved
horizon. Cars driving along on the road during a summer night
illuminate the 2,642 meter high mountain pass, but snow makes access
difficult during winter months except by serious ski touring. Cycling
fans will recognize the Col du Galibier as one of the most famous
climbs in planet Earth's Tour de France.

Tomorrow's picture: everyone's latte is ready
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 December 1
There is no obvious picture. There is just a background with a single
color. This color, a type of off-white or beige, is called cosmic
latte. Please see the explanation for more detailed information.

Cosmic Latte: The Average Color of the Universe
Image Color Credit: Karl Glazebrook & Ivan Baldry (JHU)

Explanation: What color is the universe? More precisely, if the entire
sky were smeared out, what color would the final mix be? This whimsical
question came up when trying to determine what stars are commonplace in
nearby galaxies. The answer, depicted here, is a conditionally
perceived shade of beige. In computer parlance: #FFF8E7. To determine
this, astronomers computationally averaged the light emitted by one of
the larger samples of galaxies analyzed: the 200,000 galaxies of the
2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey. The resulting cosmic spectrum has some
emission in all parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, but a single
perceived composite color. This color has become much less blue over
the past 10 billion years, indicating that redder stars are becoming
more prevalent. In a contest to better name the color, notable entries
included skyvory, univeige, and the winner: cosmic latte.

Tomorrow's picture: galaxy of stars
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2024 December 2
A classic spiral galaxy is shown with blue spiral arms. The center is
yellow-red. Many star clusters are easily visible. Please see the
explanation for more detailed information.

NGC 300: A Galaxy of Stars
Image Credit & Copyright: Daniel Stern

Explanation: This galaxy is unusual for how many stars it seems that
you can see. Stars are so abundantly evident in this deep exposure of
the spiral galaxy NGC 300 because so many of these stars are bright
blue and grouped into resolvable bright star clusters. Additionally,
NGC 300 is so clear because it is one of the closest spiral galaxies to
Earth, as light takes only about 6 million years to get here. Of
course, galaxies are composed of many more faint stars than bright, and
even more of a galaxy's mass is attributed to unseen dark matter. NGC
300 spans nearly the same amount of sky as the full moon and is visible
with a small telescope toward the southern constellation of the
Sculptor. The featured image was captured in October from Rio Hurtado,
Chile and is a composite of over 20 hours of exposure.

Tomorrow's picture: red planet blues
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 December 3
Ice clouds are seen over the surface of Mars on the upper right. Toward
the lower left is a bright spot in the sky which is likely the Sun
setting through Martian dust. Please see the explanation for more
detailed information.

Ice Clouds over a Red Planet
Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, Kevin M. Gill; Processing: Rogelio
Bernal Andreo

Explanation: If you could stand on Mars -- what might you see? You
might look out over a vast orange landscape covered with rocks under a
dusty orange sky, with a blue-tinted Sun setting over the horizon, and
odd-shaped water clouds hovering high overhead. This was just the view
captured last March by NASA's rolling explorer, Perseverance. The
orange coloring is caused by rusted iron in the Martian dirt, some of
which is small enough to be swept up by winds into the atmosphere. The
blue tint near the setting Sun is caused by blue light being
preferentially scattered out from the Sun by the floating dust. The
light-colored clouds on the right are likely composed of water-ice and
appear high in the Martian atmosphere. The shapes of some of these
clouds are unusual for Earth and remain a topic of research.

Tomorrow's picture: driveway sunspots
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
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2024 December 4

Driveway Analemma
Video Credit & Copyright: Nick Wright

Explanation: Does the Sun return to the same spot on the sky every
day? No. A more visual answer is an analemma, a composite of sky
images taken at the same time and from the same place over a year. At
completion, you can see that the Sun makes a figure 8 on the sky. The
featured unusual analemma does not, however, picture the Sun directly:
it was created by looking in the opposite direction. All that was
required was noting where the shadow of an edge of a house was in the
driveway every clear day at the same time. Starting in March in Falcon,
Colorado, USA, the photographer methodically marked the shadow's 1 pm
location. In one frame you can even see the photographer himself.
Although this analemma will be completed in 2025, you can start drawing
your own driveway analemma -- using no fancy equipment -- as soon as
today.

Tomorrow's picture: open space
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 December 5

Stereo Jupiter near Opposition
Image Credit & Copyright: Marco Lorenzi

Explanation: Jupiter looks sharp in these two rooftop telescope images.
Both were captured last year on November 17 from Singapore, planet
Earth, about two weeks after Jupiter's 2023 opposition. Climbing high
in midnight skies the giant planet was a mere 33.4 light-minutes from
Singapore. That's about 4 astronomical units away. Jupiter's planet
girdling dark belts and light zones are visible in remarkable detail,
along with the giant world's whitish oval vortices. Its signature Great
Red Spot is prominent in the south. Jupiter rotates rapidly on its axis
once every 10 hours. So, based on video frames taken only 15 minutes
apart, these images form a stereo pair. Look at the center of the pair
and cross your eyes until the separate images come together to see the
3D effect. Of course Jupiter is now not far from its 2024 opposition.
Planet Earth is set to pass between the Solar System's ruling gas giant
and the Sun on December 7.

Tomorrow's picture: Fireball Tsuchinshan
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
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2024 December 6

Xuyi Station and the Fireball
Image Credit & Copyright: Hao Liu (Stanford University)

Explanation: Colorful and bright, this streaking fireball meteor was
captured in a single exposure taken at Purple Mountain (Tsuchinshan)
ObservatoryCÇÖs Xuyi Station in 2020, during planet Earth's annual
Perseid meteor shower. The dome in the foreground houses the China Near
Earth Object Survey Telescope (CNEOST), the largest multi-purpose
Schmidt telescope in China. Located in Xuyi County, Jiangsu Province,
the station began its operation as an extension of China's Purple
Mountain Observatory in 2006. Darling of planet Earth's night skies in
2024, the bright comet designated Tsuchinshan-ATLAS (C/2023 A3) was
discovered in images taken there on 2023 January 9. The discovery is
jointly credited to NASA's ATLAS robotic survey telescope at Sutherland
Observatory, South Africa. Other comet discoveries associated with the
historic Purple Mountain Observatory and bearing the observatory's
transliterated Mandarin name include periodic comets 60/P Tsuchinshan
and 62/P Tsuchinshan.

Tomorrow's picture: warm and cozy
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 December 8
A picture of Saturn is shown with tan clouds and light rings.
Surrounding the north pole at the top are bright blue swirls. Please
see the explanation for more detailed information.

Aurora around Saturn's North Pole
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble, OPAL Program, J. DePasquale (STScI),
L. Lamy (Obs. Paris)

Explanation: Are Saturn's auroras like Earth's? To help answer this
question, the Hubble Space Telescope and the Cassini spacecraft
monitored Saturn's North Pole simultaneously during Cassini's final
orbits around the gas giant in September 2017. During this time,
Saturn's tilt caused its North Pole to be clearly visible from Earth.
The featured image is a composite of ultraviolet images of auroras and
optical images of Saturn's clouds and rings, all taken by Hubble. Like
on Earth, Saturn's northern auroras can make total or partial rings
around the pole. Unlike on Earth, however, Saturn's auroras are
frequently spirals -- and more likely to peak in brightness just before
midnight and dawn. In contrast to Jupiter's auroras, Saturn's auroras
appear better related to connecting Saturn's internal magnetic field to
the nearby, variable, solar wind. Saturn's southern auroras were
similarly imaged back in 2004 when the planet's South Pole was clearly
visible to Earth.

Your Sky Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday?
(post 1995)
Tomorrow's picture: how many sisters?
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2024 December 9
A star field shows many bright blue stars as well as bright blue
reflecting gas. Please see the explanation for more detailed
information.

Pleiades: The Seven Sisters Star Cluster
Image Credit & Copyright: Francesco Pelizzo

Explanation: Have you ever seen the Pleiades star cluster? Even if you
have, you probably have never seen it as large and clear as this.
Perhaps the most famous star cluster on the sky, the bright stars of
the Pleiades can be seen with the unaided eye even from the depths of a
light-polluted city. With a long exposure from a dark location, though,
the dust cloud surrounding the Pleiades star cluster becomes very
evident. The featured 23-hour exposure, taken from Fagagna, Italy
covers a sky area several times the size of the full moon. Also known
as the Seven Sisters and M45, the Pleiades lies about 400 light years
away toward the constellation of the Bull (Taurus). A common legend
with a modern twist is that one of the brighter stars faded since the
cluster was named, leaving only six of the sister stars visible to the
unaided eye. The actual number of Pleiades stars visible, however, may
be more or less than seven, depending on the darkness of the
surrounding sky and the clarity of the observer's eyesight.

New: Alternative multi-APOD front page
Tomorrow's picture: wooden meteors
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 December 10
A black and white drawing shows many meteors crossing the sky above a
small town with many people outside watching. Please see the
explanation for more detailed information.

The Great Meteor Storm of 1833
Image Credit: Engraving: Adolf Vollmy; Original Art: Karl Jauslin

Explanation: It was a night of 100,000 meteors. The Great Meteor Storm
of 1833 was perhaps the most impressive meteor event in recent history.
Best visible over eastern North America during the pre-dawn hours of
November 13, many people -- including a young Abraham Lincoln -- were
woken up to see the sky erupt in streaks and flashes. Hundreds of
thousands of meteors blazed across the sky, seemingly pouring out of
the constellation of the Lion (Leo). The featured image is a
digitization of a wood engraving which itself was based on a painting
from a first-person account. We know today that the Great Meteor Storm
of 1833 was caused by the Earth moving through a dense part of the dust
trail expelled from Comet Tempel-Tuttle. The Earth moves through this
dust stream every November during the Leonid meteor shower. Later this
week you might get a slight taste of the intensity of that 1833 meteor
storm by witnessing the annual Geminid meteor shower.

Explore Your Universe: Random APOD Generator
Tomorrow's picture: jets and shells
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 December 11
A galaxy is seen in the center of the image. Faint shells are seen
around it. A red-colored jet is seen emanating from the galaxy toward
the lower right. Please see the explanation for more detailed
information.

The Shells and Jets of Galaxy Centaurus A
Image Credit: Rolf Olsen

Explanation: What's the closest active galaxy to planet Earth? That
would be Centaurus A, cataloged as NGC 5128, which is only 12 million
light-years distant. Forged in a collision of two otherwise normal
galaxies, Centaurus A shows several distinctive features including a
dark dust lane across its center, outer shells of stars and gas, and
jets of particles shooting out from a supermassive black hole at its
center. The featured image captures all of these in a composite series
of visible light images totaling over 310 hours captured over the past
10 years with a homebuilt telescope operating in Auckland, New Zealand.
The brightness of Cen A's center from low-energy radio waves to
high-energy gamma rays underlies its designation as an active galaxy.

Astrophysicists: Browse 3,500+ codes in the Astrophysics Source Code
Library
Tomorrow's picture: open space
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 December 12

Phaethon's Brood
Image Credit & Copyright: Mikiya Sato (Nippon Meteor Society)

Explanation: Based on its well-measured orbit, 3200 Phaethon (sounds
like FAY-eh-thon) is recognized as the source of the meteoroid stream
responsible for the annual Geminid meteor shower. Even though most
meteor shower parents are comets, 3200 Phaethon is a known and closely
tracked near-Earth asteroid with a 1.4 year orbital period. Rocky and
sun-baked, its perihelion or closest approach to the Sun is well within
the orbit of innermost planet Mercury. In this telescopic field of
view, the asteroid's rapid motion against faint background stars of the
heroic constellation Perseus left a short trail during the two minute
total exposure time. The (faint) parallel streaks of its meteoric
children flashed much more quickly across the scene. The family
portrait was recorded near the Geminid meteor shower's very active peak
on 2017 December 13. That was just three days before 3200 Phaethon's
historic close approach to planet Earth. This year, the night of
December 13 should again see the peak of the Geminid meteor shower, but
faint meteors will be washed out by the bright light of the nearly full
moon.

Watch: The 2024 Geminid Meteor Shower
Tomorrow's picture: deep sky
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 December 13

M51: Tidal Streams and H-alpha Cliffs
Image Credit & Copyright: The Deep Sky Collective - Tim Schaeffer,
Carl Bj++rk, Steeve Body, Fabian Neyer, Aki Jain, Ryan Wierckx, Paul
Kent, Brian Valente, Antoine & Dalia Grelin,
Nicolas Puig, Stephen Guberski, Mike Hamende, Julian Shapiro, John
Dziuba, Mikhail Vasilev, Bogdan Borz, Adrien Keijzer

Explanation: An intriguing pair of interacting galaxies, M51 is the
51st entry in Charles Messier's famous catalog. Perhaps the original
spiral nebula, the large galaxy with whirlpool-like spiral structure
seen nearly face-on is also cataloged as NGC 5194. Its spiral arms and
dust lanes sweep in front of its smaller companion galaxy, NGC 5195.
Some 31 million light-years distant, within the boundaries of the
well-trained constellation Canes Venatici, M51 looks faint and fuzzy to
the eye in direct telescopic views. But this remarkably deep image
shows off stunning details of the galaxy pair's striking colors and
fainter tidal streams. The image includes extensive narrowband data to
highlight a vast reddish cloud of ionized hydrogen gas recently
discovered in the M51 system and known to some as the H-alpha cliffs.
Foreground dust clouds in the Milky Way and distant background galaxies
are captured in the wide-field view. A continuing collaboration of
astro-imagers using telescopes on planet Earth assembled over 3 weeks
of exposure time to create this evolving portrait of M51.

Watch: The 2024 Geminid Meteor Shower
Tomorrow's picture: deep diving
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2024 December 14

Apollo 17's Moonship
Image Credit: Apollo 17, NASA, (Image Reprocessing: Andy Saunders)

Explanation: Awkward and angular looking, Apollo 17's lunar module
Challenger was designed for flight in the near vacuum of space.
Digitally enhanced and reprocessed, this picture taken from Apollo 17's
command module America shows Challenger's ascent stage in lunar orbit.
Small reaction control thrusters are at the sides of the moonship with
the bell of the ascent rocket engine underneath. The hatch allowing
access to the lunar surface is seen at the front, with a round radar
antenna at the top. Mission commander Gene Cernan is clearly visible
through the triangular window. This spaceship performed gracefully,
landing on the Moon and returning the Apollo astronauts to the orbiting
command module in December of 1972. So where is Challenger now? Its
descent stage remains at the Apollo 17 landing site in the
Taurus-Littrow valley. The ascent stage pictured was intentionally
crashed nearby after being jettisoned from the command module prior to
the astronauts' return to planet Earth.

Tomorrow's picture: cliffs on a comet
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2024 December 15
A snowy landscape is pictured below a starry sky. The very bright Moon
appears on the upper right. Many streaks are visile that are meteors
taken over the night. Please see the explanation for more detailed
information.

Geminid Meteors over a Snowy Forest
Image Credit & Copyright: Jakub Ku+Ö+ík

Explanation: Meteors have been flowing out from the constellation
Gemini. This was expected, as mid-December is the time of the Geminid
Meteor Shower. Pictured here, over two dozen meteors were caught in
successively added exposures taken over several hours early Saturday
morning from a snowy forest in Poland. The fleeting streaks were bright
enough to be seen over the din of the nearly full Moon on the upper
right. These streaks can all be traced back to a point on the sky
called the radiant toward the bright stars Pollux and Castor in the
image center. The Geminid meteors started as sand sized bits expelled
from asteroid 3200 Phaethon during its elliptical orbit through the
inner Solar System.

Jigsaw Challenge: Astronomy Puzzle of the Day
Tomorrow's picture: comet cliff
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2024 December 16
A black and white image shows, from the side, the wall of a high jagged
cliff. At the bottom of the cliff is a smooth landing dotted with
rocks. Please see the explanation for more detailed information.

A Kilometer High Cliff on Comet Churyumov - Gerasimenko
Image Credit & Licence (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO): ESA, Rosetta spacecraft,
NAVCAM; Additional Processing: Stuart Atkinson

Explanation: This kilometer high cliff occurs on the surface of a
comet. It was discovered on the dark nucleus of Comet Churyumov -
Gerasimenko (CG) by Rosetta, a robotic spacecraft launched by ESA,
which orbited the comet from 2014 to 2016. The ragged cliff, as
featured here, was imaged by Rosetta early in its mission. Although
towering about one kilometer high, the low surface gravity of Comet CG
would likely make a jump from the cliffs by a human survivable. At the
foot of the cliffs is relatively smooth terrain dotted with boulders as
large as 20 meters across. Data from Rosetta indicates that the ice in
Comet CG has a significantly different deuterium fraction -- and hence
likely a different origin -- than the water in Earth's oceans. The
probe was named after the Rosetta Stone, a rock slab featuring the same
text written in three different languages that helped humanity decipher
ancient Egyptian writing.

Tomorrow's picture: near to the heart
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2024 December 17
A wide star field is shown with several nebulae as identified by the
rollover image. On the upper left is a large nebula named the Heart
Nebula. Please see the explanation for more detailed information.

Near to the Heart Nebula
Image Credit & Copyright: Jeff Horne & Drew Evans

Explanation: What excites the Heart Nebula? First, the large emission
nebula on the upper left, catalogued as IC 1805, looks somewhat like a
human heart. The nebula glows brightly in red light emitted by its most
prominent element, hydrogen, but this long-exposure image was also
blended with light emitted by sulfur (yellow) and oxygen (blue). In the
center of the Heart Nebula are young stars from the open star cluster
Melotte 15 that are eroding away several picturesque dust pillars with
their atom-exciting energetic light and winds. The Heart Nebula is
located about 7,500 light years away toward the constellation of
Cassiopeia. This wide field image shows much more, though, including
the Fishhead Nebula just below the Heart, a supernova remnant on the
lower left, and three planetary nebulas on the image right. Taken over
57 nights, this image is so deep, though, that it clearly shows fainter
long and complex filaments.

Tomorrow's picture: twisted galaxy
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2024 December 18
A dark starfield has an unusual galaxy in the center. This galaxy has a
spindle-like shape showing two dust lanes -- one running vertically and
one running diagonally from the upper left. Please see the explanation
for more detailed information.

NGC 660: Polar Ring Galaxy
Image Credit & Copyright: Mike Selby

Explanation: What kind of strange galaxy is this? This rare structure
is known as a polar ring galaxy, and it seems to have two different
rings of stars. In this galaxy, NGC 660, one ring of bright stars, gas,
and dark dust appears nearly vertical, while another similar but
shorter ring runs diagonally from the upper left. How polar ring
galaxies obtain their striking appearance remains a topic of research,
but a leading theory holds that it is usually the result of two
galaxies with different central ring planes colliding. NGC 660 spans
about 50,000 light years and is located about 40 million light years
away toward the constellation of the Fish (Pisces). The featured image
was captured recently from Observatorio El Sauce in Chile.

Tomorrow's picture: open space
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2024 December 19

Messier 2
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, G. Piotto et al.

Explanation: After the Crab Nebula, this giant star cluster is the
second entry in 18th century astronomer Charles Messier's famous list
of things that are not comets. M2 is one of the largest globular star
clusters now known to roam the halo of our Milky Way galaxy. Though
Messier originally described it as a nebula without stars, this
stunning Hubble image resolves stars across the cluster's central 40
light-years. Its population of stars numbers close to 150,000,
concentrated within a total diameter of around 175 light-years. About
55,000 light-years distant toward the constellation Aquarius, this
ancient denizen of the Milky Way, also known as NGC 7089, is 13 billion
years old. An extended stellar debris stream, a signature of past
gravitational tidal disruption, was recently found to be associated
with Messier 2.

Tomorrow's picture: the last full moon
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2024 December 20

The Long Night Moon
Image Credit & Copyright: Giorgia Hofer and Dario Giannobile (Pictores
caeli)

Explanation: On the night of December 15, the Full Moon was bright.
Known to some as the Cold Moon or the Long Night Moon, it was the
closest Full Moon to the northern winter solstice and the last Full
Moon of 2024. This Full Moon was also at a major lunar standstill. A
major lunar standstill is an extreme in the monthly north-south range
of moonrise and moonset caused by the precession of the Moon's orbit
over an 18.6 year cycle. As a result, the full lunar phase was near the
Moon's northernmost moonrise (and moonset) along the horizon.
December's Full Moon is rising in this stacked image, a composite of
exposures recording the range of brightness visible to the eye on the
northern winter night. Along with a colorful lunar corona and aircraft
contrail this Long Night Moon shines in a cold sky above the rugged,
snowy peaks of the Italian Dolomites.

Tomorrow's picture: major solar standstill
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2024 December 21

A Year in Sunsets
Image Credit & Copyright: Wael Omar

Explanation: A year in sunsets, from April 2023 to March 2024, track
along the western horizon in these stacked panoramic views. The
well-planed sequence is constructed of images recorded near the 21st
day of the indicated month from the same location overlooking Cairo,
Egypt. But for any location on planet Earth the yearly extreme northern
(picture right) and southern limits of the setting Sun mark the
solstice days. The word solstice is from Latin for "Sun" and "stand
still". On the solstice date the seasonal drift of the Sun's daily path
through the sky appears to pause and reverse direction in its annual
celestial journey. Of course the Sun reaches a stand still on today's
date. The 21 December 2024 solstice at 09:21 UTC is the moment of the
Sun's southernmost declination, the start of astronomical winter in the
north and summer in the south.

Tomorrow's picture: just local fluff
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2024 December 22
An artist's illustration shows where our Sun resides relative to local
interstellar gas. The direction of motion of the Sun and local gas is
shown with arrows. Please see the explanation for more detailed
information.

The Local Fluff
Illustration Credit: NASA, SVS, Adler, U. Chicago, Wesleyan

Explanation: The stars are not alone. In the disk of our Milky Way
Galaxy, about 10 percent of visible matter is in the form of gas called
the interstellar medium (ISM). The ISM is not uniform and shows
patchiness even near our Sun. It can be quite difficult to detect the
local ISM because it is so tenuous and emits so little light. This
mostly hydrogen gas, however, absorbs some very specific colors that
can be detected in the light of the nearest stars. A working map of the
local ISM within 20 light-years, based on ongoing observations and
particle detections from the Earth-orbiting Interstellar Boundary
Exporer satellite (IBEX), is shown here. These observations indicate
that our Sun is moving through a Local Interstellar Cloud as this cloud
flows outwards from the Scorpius-Centaurus Association star forming
region. Our Sun may exit the Local Cloud, also called the Local Fluff,
during the next 10,000 years. Much remains unknown about the local ISM,
including details of its distribution, its origin, and how it affects
the Sun and the Earth. Unexpectedly, IBEX spacecraft measurements
indicate that the direction from which neutral interstellar particles
flow through our Solar System is changing.

APOD Year in Review: Night Sky Network Presentation for 2024
Tomorrow's picture: sky tree
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2024 December 23
A star filled night sky is shown with aurora visible in blue, purple
and green. The aurora could be perceived to be a spruce tree, or even a
Christmas tree. Please see the explanation for more detailed
information.

Christmas Tree Aurora
Image Credit & Copyright: Jingyi Zhang

Explanation: It was December and the sky lit up like a Christmas tree.
Shimmering, the vivid green, blue, and purple auroral colors that
formed the tree-like apparition were caused by high atmospheric oxygen
and nitrogen reacting to a burst of incoming electrons. Collisions
caused the orbital electrons of atoms and molecules to jump into
excited energy states and emit visible light when returning to their
normal state. The featured image was captured in Dj+|pivogur, Iceland
during the last month of 2023. Our Sun is currently in its most
energetic phase of its 11-year cycle, with its high number of active
regions and sunspots likely to last into next year. Of course, the Sun
has been near solar maximum during this entire year, with its outbursts
sometimes resulting in spectacular Earthly auroras.

Image Processors: Take NASA's Astrophoto Challenge
Tomorrow's picture: star tree
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2024 December 24
A starfield filled with colorful gas and dark dust features a
cone-shaped nebula near the image top and nebular structure reminiscent
of the fur of a fox near the middle. A wide area of light emission
resembles the shape of a Christmas tree. Please see the explanation for
more detailed information.

Fox Fur, Cone, and Christmas Tree
Image Credit & Copyright: Tim White

Explanation: What do the following things have in common: a cone, the
fur of a fox, and a Christmas tree? Answer: they all occur in the
constellation of the Unicorn (Monoceros). Considered as a star forming
region and cataloged as NGC 2264, the complex jumble of cosmic gas and
dust is about 2,700 light-years distant and mixes reddish emission
nebulae excited by energetic light from newborn stars with dark
interstellar dust clouds. The featured image spans an angle larger than
a full moon, covering over 50 light-years at the distance of NGC 2264.
Its cast of cosmic characters includes the Fox Fur Nebula, whose
convoluted pelt lies just to the left of the image center, bright
variable star S Mon visible just to the right of the Fox Fur, and the
Cone Nebula near the image top. With the Cone Nebula at the peak, the
shape of the general glow of the region give it the nickname of the
Christmas Tree Cluster, where stars are tree ornaments.

Explore Your Universe: Random APOD Generator
Tomorrow's picture: sky eye
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 December 25
A snow covered road goes up a hill to a sky filled with stars. Arcs and
halos in the sky ahead appear similar to a giant eye. Please see the
explanation for more detailed information.

Diamond Dust Sky Eye
Image Credit & Copyright: Jaroslav Fous

Explanation: Why is there a huge eye in the sky? Diamond dust. That is
an informal term for small ice crystals that form in the air and
flitter to the ground. Because these crystals are geometrically shaped,
they can together reflect light from the Sun or Moon to your eyes in a
systematic way, causing huge halos and unusual arcs to appear. And
sometimes, together the result can seem like a giant eye looking right
back at you. In the featured image taken in the Ore Mountains of the
Czech Republic last week, a bright Moon rising through ice fog-filled
air resulted in many of these magnificent sky illusions to be visible
simultaneously. Besides Moon dogs, tangent arcs, halos, and a parhelic
circle, light pillars above distant lights are visible on the far left,
while Jupiter and Mars can be found just inside the bottom of the
22-degree halo.

Your Sky Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday?
(post 1995)
Tomorrow's picture: grand spiral galaxy
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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written by a professional astronomer.

2024 December 26

Grand Spiral NGC 5643
Image Credit: ESA / Hubble & NASA

Explanation: Viewed face-on, grand spiral galaxy NGC 5643 has a festive
appearance in this colorful cosmic portrait. Some 55 million
light-years distant, the galaxy extends for over 100,000 light-years,
seen within the boundaries of the southern constellation Lupus. Its
inner 40,000 light-years are shown in sharp detail in this composite of
Hubble Space Telescope image data. The galaxy's magnificent spiral arms
wind from a yellowish central region dominated by light from old stars,
while the spiral arms themselves are traced by dust lanes, young blue
stars and reddish star forming regions. The bright compact core of NGC
5643 is also known as a strong emitter of radio waves and X-rays. In
fact, NGC 5643 is one of the closest examples of the Seyfert class of
active galaxies, where vast amounts of dust and gas are thought to be
falling into a central massive black hole.

Tomorrow's picture: planet Earth at twilight
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2024 December 27

Planet Earth at Twilight
Image Credit: ISS Expedition 2 Crew, Gateway to Astronaut Photography
of Earth, NASA

Explanation: No sudden, sharp boundary marks the passage of day into
night in this gorgeous view of ocean and clouds over our fair planet
Earth. Instead, the shadow line or terminator is diffuse and shows the
gradual transition to darkness we experience as twilight. With the Sun
illuminating the scene from the right, the cloud tops reflect gently
reddened sunlight filtered through the dusty troposphere, the lowest
layer of the planet's nurturing atmosphere. A clear high altitude
layer, visible along the dayside's upper edge, scatters blue sunlight
and fades into the blackness of space. This picture was taken from the
International Space Station orbiting at an altitude of 211 nautical
miles. Of course from home, you can check out the Earth Now.

Tomorrow's picture: planet Earth at night
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 December 28

A December Winter Night
Image Credit & Copyright: W+éodzimierz Bubak

Explanation: Orion seems to come up sideways, climbing over a distant
mountain range in this deep skyscape. The wintry scene was captured
from southern Poland on the northern hemisphere's long solstice night.
Otherwise unseen nebulae hang in the sky, revealed by the camera
modified to record red hydrogen-alpha light. The nebulae lie near the
edge of the Orion molecular cloud and join the Hunter's familiar belt
stars and bright giants Betelgeuse and Rigel. Eye of Taurus the Bull,
yellowish Aldebaran anchors the V-shaped Hyades star cluster near top
center. Still, near opposition in planet Earth's sky, the Solar
System's ruling gas giant Jupiter is the brightest celestial beacon
above this horizon's snowy peaks.

Tomorrow's picture: frozen
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 December 29
A frozen lake is shown that appears quite blue. Many oval light-colored
bubbles are frozen into the ice, many times in columns. Please see the
explanation for more detailed information.

Methane Bubbles Frozen in Lake Baikal
Image Credit & Copyright: Kristina Makeeva

Explanation: What are these bubbles frozen into Lake Baikal? Methane.
Lake Baikal, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Russia, is the world's
largest (by volume), oldest, and deepest lake, containing over 20% of
the world's fresh water. The lake is also a vast storehouse of methane,
a greenhouse gas that, if released, could potentially increase the
amount of infrared light absorbed by Earth's atmosphere, and so
increase the average temperature of the entire planet. Fortunately, the
amount of methane currently bubbling out is not climatologically
important. It is not clear what would happen, though, were temperatures
to significantly increase in the region, or if the water level in Lake
Baikal were to drop. Pictured, bubbles of rising methane froze during
winter into the exceptionally clear ice covering the lake.

Jigsaw Challenge: Astronomy Puzzle of the Day
Tomorrow's picture: our sun's future
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply.
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2024 December 30
A starfield is shown with a frame dominated by a gaseous nebula. The
nebula, filled with structure, appears orange in the center but blue
around the edges. Please see the explanation for more detailed
information.

M27: The Dumbbell Nebula
Image Credit & Copyright: Christopher Stobie

Explanation: Is this what will become of our Sun? Quite possibly. The
first hint of our Sun's future was discovered inadvertently in 1764. At
that time, Charles Messier was compiling a list of diffuse objects not
to be confused with comets. The 27th object on Messier's list, now
known as M27 or the Dumbbell Nebula, is a planetary nebula, one of the
brightest planetary nebulas on the sky and visible with binoculars
toward the constellation of the Fox (Vulpecula). It takes light about
1000 years to reach us from M27, featured here in colors emitted by
sulfur (red), hydrogen (green) and oxygen (blue). We now know that in
about 6 billion years, our Sun will shed its outer gases into a
planetary nebula like M27, while its remaining center will become an
X-ray hot white dwarf star. Understanding the physics and significance
of M27 was well beyond 18th century science, though. Even today, many
things remain mysterious about planetary nebulas, including how their
intricate shapes are created.

APOD Year in Review: Night Sky Network Presentation for 2024
Tomorrow's picture: dark and twisted
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2024 December 31
A dark field shows an oblong orange glow with some dark and complex
dust lanes running through. Please see the explanation for more
detailed information.

The Twisted Disk of NGC 4753
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble; Processing: Alexander Reinartz

Explanation: What do you think this is? HereCÇÖs a clue: it's bigger than
a bread box. Much bigger. The answer is that pictured NGC 4753 is a
twisted disk galaxy, where unusual dark dust filaments provide clues
about its history. No one is sure what happened, but a leading model
holds that a relatively normal disk galaxy gravitationally ripped apart
a dusty satellite galaxy while its precession distorted the plane of
the accreted debris as it rotated. The cosmic collision is hypothesized
to have started about a billion years ago. NGC 4753 is seen from the
side, and possibly would look like a normal spiral galaxy from the top.
The bright orange halo is composed of many older stars that might trace
dark matter. The featured Hubble image was recently reprocessed to
highlight ultraviolet and red-light emissions.

APOD Year in Review: NASA Night Sky Network Presentation for 2024
Tomorrow's picture: nearby triple
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2025 January 1
A star field is filled with red-glowing gas. Near the center is a
bright star system Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to our Sun.
Please see the explanation for more detailed information.

Alpha Centauri: The Closest Star System
Image Credit & Copyright: Telescope Live, Heaven's Mirror Observatory;
Processing: Chris Cantrell

Explanation: The closest star system to the Sun is the Alpha Centauri
system. Of the three stars in the system, the dimmest -- called Proxima
Centauri -- is actually the nearest star. The bright stars Alpha
Centauri A and B form a close binary as they are separated by only 23
times the Earth- Sun distance - slightly greater than the distance
between Uranus and the Sun. The Alphasystem
is not visible in much of the northern hemisphere. Alpha Centauri A,
also known as Rigil Kentaurus, is the brightest star in the
constellation of Centaurus and is the fourth brightest star in the
night sky. Sirius is the brightest even though it is more than twice as
far away. By an exciting coincidence, Alpha Centauri A is the same type
of star as our Sun, and Proxima Centauri is now known to have a
potentially habitable exoplanet.

Tomorrow's picture: 2024 in the sun
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2025 January 2

Solar Analemma 2024
Image Credit & Copyright: Betul Turksoy

Explanation: Recorded during 2024, this year-spanning series of images
reveals a pattern in the seasonal drift of the Sun's daily motion
through planet Earth's sky. Known to some as an analemma, the
figure-eight curve was captured in exposures taken only at 1pm local
time on clear days from Kayseri, Turkiye. Of course the Sun's position
on the 2024 solstice dates was at the top and bottom of the curve. They
correspond to the astronomical beginning of summer and winter in the
north. The points along the curve half-way between the solstices, but
not the figure-eight curve crossing point, mark the 2024 equinoxes and
the start of spring and fall. Regional peaks and dormant volcano Mount
Erciyes lie along the southern horizon in the 2024 timelapse skyscape.

Tomorrow's picture: eclipse pair
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2025 January 3

Eclipse Pair
Image Credit & Copyright: Josh Dury

Explanation: Eclipses tend to come in pairs. Twice a year, during an
eclipse season that lasts about 34 days, Sun, Moon, and Earth can
nearly align. Then the full and new phases of the Moon, separated by
just over 14 days, create a lunar and a solar eclipse. But only rarely
is the alignment at both new moon and full moon phases during a single
eclipse season close enough to produce a pair with both total (or a
total and an annular) lunar and solar eclipses. More often, partial
eclipses are part of any eclipse season. In fact, the last eclipse
season of 2024 produced this fortnight-separated eclipse pair: a
partial lunar eclipse on 18 September and an annular solar eclipse on 2
October. The time-lapse composite images were captured from Somerset,
UK (left) and Rapa Nui planet Earth. The 2025 eclipse seasons will see
a total lunar eclipse on 14 March paired with a partial solar eclipse
on 29 March, and a total lunar eclipse on 8 September followed by a
partial solar eclipse on 21 September.

Tomorrow's picture: light-weekend
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
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2025 January 4

Welcome to Perihelion
Image Credit & Copyright: Peter Ward (Barden Ridge Observatory)

Explanation: Earth's orbit around the Sun is not a circle, it's an
ellipse. The point along its elliptical orbit where our fair planet is
closest to the Sun is called perihelion. This year perihelion is today,
January 4, at 13:28 UTC, with the Earth about 147 million kilometers
from the Sun. For comparison, at aphelion on last July 3 Earth was at
its farthest distance from the Sun, some 152 million kilometers away.
But distance from the Sun doesn't determine Earth's seasons. It's only
by coincidence that the beginning of southern summer (northern winter)
on the December solstice - when this H-alpha picture of the active Sun
was taken - is within 14 days of Earth's perihelion date. And it's only
by coincidence that Earth's perihelion date is within 11 days of the
historic perihelion of NASA's Parker Solar Probe. Launched in 2018, the
Parker Solar Probe flew within 6.2 million kilometers of the Sun's
surface on 2024 December 24, breaking its own record for closest
perihelion for a spacecraft from planet Earth.

Tomorrow's picture: rocket launch
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2025 January 5

Rocket Launch as Seen from the International Space Station
Video Credit: ISAA, NASA, Expedition 57 Crew (ISS);
Processing: Riccardo Rossi (ISAA, AstronautiCAST); Music: Inspiring
Adventure Cinematic Background by Maryna

Explanation: Have you ever seen a rocket launch -- from space? A close
inspection of the featured time-lapse video will reveal a rocket rising
to Earth orbit as seen from the International Space Station (ISS). The
Russian Soyuz-FG rocket was launched in November 2018 from the Baikonur
Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carrying a Progress MS-10 (also 71P) module
to bring needed supplies to the ISS. Highlights in the 90-second video
(condensing about 15-minutes) include city lights and clouds visible on
the Earth on the lower left, blue and gold bands of atmospheric airglow
running diagonally across the center, and distant stars on the upper
right that set behind the Earth. A lower stage can be seen falling back
to Earth as the robotic supply ship fires its thrusters and begins to
close on the ISS, a space laboratory that celebrated its 25th
anniversary in 2023. Astronauts who live aboard the Earth-orbiting ISS
conduct, among more practical duties, numerous science experiments that
expand human knowledge and enable future commercial industry in low
Earth orbit.

Tomorrow's picture: galaxies collide
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
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2025 January 6
Two spiral galaxies are pictured on the left and right. They galaxy on
the left is smaller. Both show red lanes of dust in their spiral arms.
Please see the explanation for more detailed information.

Colliding Spiral Galaxies from Webb and Hubble
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

Explanation: Billions of years from now, only one of these two galaxies
will remain. Until then, spiral galaxies NGC 2207 and IC 2163 will
slowly pull each other apart, creating tides of matter, sheets of
shocked gas, lanes of dark dust, bursts of star formation, and streams
of cast-away stars. The featured image in scientifically assigned
colors is a composite of Hubble exposures in visible light and Webb
exposures in infrared light. Astronomers predict that NGC 2207, the
larger galaxy on the right, will eventually incorporate IC 2163, the
smaller galaxy on the left. In the most recent encounter that about
peaked 40 million years ago, the smaller galaxy is swinging around
counter-clockwise and is now slightly behind the larger galaxy. The
space between stars is so vast that when galaxies collide, the stars in
them usually do not collide.

Jigsaw Challenge: Astronomy Puzzle of the Day
Tomorrow's picture: double red sky
__________________________________________________________________

Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
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2025 January 7
A star field appears above a town at night. The left part of the sky
shows a pinkish-red glow that is an aurora, while the right part of the
sky shows a smoother and darker glow that is a SAR arc. Please see the
explanation for more detailed information.

A New Year's Aurora and SAR Arc
Image Credit & Copyright: Alessandra Masi

Explanation: It was a new year, and the sky was doubly red. The new
year meant that the Earth had returned to its usual place in its orbit
on January 1, a place a few days before its closest approach to the
Sun. The first of the two red skyglows, on the left, was a red aurora,
complete with vertical rays, caused by a blast from the Sun pushing
charged particles into Earth's atmosphere. The second red glow, most
prominent on the far right, was possibly a SAR arc caused by a river of
charged particles flowing across Earth's atmosphere. Although both
appear red, the slight color difference is likely due to the aurora
being emitted by both oxygen and nitrogen, whereas the higher SAR arc
was possibly emitted more purely by atmospheric oxygen. The featured
image was taken on January 1 from near Pieve di Cadore in Italy.

Portal Universe: Random APOD Generator
Tomorrow's picture: supernovas (plural)
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
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2025 January 8
A star field appears that has several nebulas. Toward the upper left is
a angularly small supernova remnant colored blue, while dominating the
lower right is a large supernova remnant in both red and blue. Please
see the explanation for more detailed information.

Supernova Remnants Big and Small
Image Credit & Copyright: St+¬phane Vetter (Nuits sacr+¬es)

Explanation: What happens after a star explodes? A huge fireball of hot
gas shoots out in all directions. When this gas slams into the existing
interstellar medium, it heats up so much it glows. Two different
supernova remnants (SNRs) are visible in the featured image, taken at
the Ouka+»meden Observatory in Morocco. The blue soccer ball-looking
nebula toward the upper left is SNR G179.0+02.6, which appears to be
the smaller one. This supernova, about 11,000 light years distant,
detonated about 50,000 years ago. Although composed mostly of hydrogen
gas, the blue light is emitted by a trace amount of oxygen. The
seemingly larger SNR, dominating the lower right of the frame, is the
Spaghetti Nebula, cataloged as Simeis 147 and sh2-240. This supernova,
only about 3,000 light years away, exploded about 40,000 years ago.
Comparatively, even though they appear different sizes, both supernova
remnants are not only roughly the same age, but about the same size,
too.

Tomorrow's picture: open space
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2025 January 9

Peculiar Galaxies of Arp 273
Image Credit & Copyright: Dave Doctor

Explanation: The colorful, spiky stars are in the foreground of this
image taken with a small telescope on planet Earth. They lie well
within our own Milky Way Galaxy. But the two eye-catching galaxies in
the frame lie far beyond the Milky Way, at a distance of over 300
million light-years. The galaxies' twisted and distorted appearance is
due to mutual gravitational tides as the pair engage in close
encounters. Cataloged as Arp 273 (also as UGC 1810), these galaxies do
look peculiar, but interacting galaxies are now understood to be common
in the universe. Closer to home, the large spiral Andromeda Galaxy is
known to be some 2 million light-years away and inexorably approaching
the Milky Way. In fact the far away peculiar galaxies of Arp 273 may
offer an analog of the far future encounter of Andromeda and Milky Way.
Repeated galaxy encounters on a cosmic timescale ultimately result in a
merger into a single galaxy of stars. From our perspective, the bright
cores of the Arp 273 galaxies are separated by only a little over
100,000 light-years.

Tomorrow's picture: pixels in space
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2025 January 10

Young Stars, Dark Nebulae
Image Credit & Copyright: Long Xin

Explanation: An unassuming region in the constellation Taurus holds
these dark and dusty nebulae. Scattered through the scene, stars in
multiple star systems are forming within their natal Taurus molecular
cloud complex some 450 light-years away. Millions of years young and
still going through stellar adolescence, the stars are variable in
brightness and in the late phases of their gravitational collapse.
Known as T-Tauri class stars they tend to be faint and take on a
yellowish hue in the image. One of the brightest T-Tauri stars in
Taurus, V773 (aka HD283447) is near the center of the telescopic frame
that spans over 1 degree. Toward the top is the dense, dark marking on
the sky cataloged as Barnard 209.

Tomorrow's picture: light-weekend
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2025 January 11

An Evening Sky Full of Planets
Image Credit & Copyright: Dario Giannobile

Explanation: Only Mercury is missing from a Solar System parade of
planets in this early evening skyscape. Rising nearly opposite the Sun,
bright Mars is at the far left. The other naked-eye planets Jupiter,
Saturn, and Venus, can also be spotted, with the the position of
too-faint Uranus and Neptune marked near the arcing trace of the
ecliptic plane. On the far right and close to the western horizon after
sunset is a young crescent Moon whose surface is partly illuminated by
earthshine. In the foreground of the composite panorama captured on 2
January, planet Earth is represented by Mount Etna's lower Silvestri
Crater. Of course Earth's early evening skies are full of planets for
the entire month of January. On 13 January, a nearly Full Moon will
appear to pass in front of Mars for skywatchers in the continental U.S.
and Eastern Canada.

Tomorrow's picture: small moon, big crater
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2025 January 12
A cratered object is shown that shows on really large crater on its
right side. Please see the explanation for more detailed information.

Mimas: Small Moon with a Big Crater
Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, Space Science Institute, Cassini

Explanation: Whatever hit Mimas nearly destroyed it. What remains is
one of the largest impact craters on one of Saturn's smallest round
moons. Analysis indicates that a slightly larger impact would have
destroyed Mimas entirely. The huge crater, named Herschel after the
1789 discoverer of Mimas, Sir William Herschel, spans about 130
kilometers and is featured here. Mimas' low mass produces a surface
gravity just strong enough to create a spherical body but weak enough
to allow such relatively large surface features. Mimas is made of
mostly water ice with a smattering of rock - so it is accurately
described as a big dirty snowball. The featured image was taken during
the closest-ever flyby of the robot spacecraft Cassini past Mimas in
2010 while in orbit around Saturn.

Interactive: Take a trek across Mimas
January 14: Zoom APOD Lecture hosted by the Amateur Astronomers of
Association of New York
Tomorrow's picture: do north
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
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2025 January 13
A morning sky is shown about a line of trees. In the sky is a faint
comet. The comet is shown in better detailed in an inset image on the
upper left. Please see the explanation for more detailed information.

Comet ATLAS Before Sunrise
Image Credit & Copyright: Petr Horalek / Institute of Physics in Opava

Explanation: Comet ATLAS is really bright now, but also really close to
the Sun. Outside the glow of the Sun, Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) would be
one of the more remarkable comet sights of recent years, reflecting
about as much sunlight to Earth as Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS did in
October, and now rivaling even planet Venus. But the giant snowball is
now so close to the Sun that it can only be seen through the light of
the early morning dawn or the early evening dusk. Today, Comet ATLAS is
at perihelion -- its closest ever to the Sun. Although the future
brightness of comets is notoriously hard to predict, there is hope that
Comet ATLAS will survive its close pass near the Sun and remain bright
enough to be seen with the unaided eye over the next few days -- and
possibly a good camera comet for weeks. The featured image was taken
early yesterday morning near Torna-'a, Slovakia.

Tomorrow: Zoom APOD Lecture hosted by the Amateur Astronomers of
Association of New York
Tomorrow's picture: do north
__________________________________________________________________

Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2025 January 14
A bright star is pictured in the center of field filled with glowing
gas and dust and other, more faint, stars. Please see the explanation
for more detailed information.

North Star: Polaris and Surrounding Dust
Image Credit & Copyright: Davide Coverta

Explanation: Why is Polaris called the North Star? First, Polaris is
the nearest bright star toward the north spin axis of the Earth.
Therefore, as the Earth turns, stars appear to revolve around Polaris,
but Polaris itself always stays in the same northerly direction --
making it the North Star. Since no bright star is near the south spin
axis of the Earth, there is currently no bright South Star. Thousands
of years ago, Earth's spin axis pointed in a slightly different
direction so that Vega was the North Star. Although Polaris is not the
brightest star on the sky, it is easily located because it is nearly
aligned with two stars in the cup of the Big Dipper. Polaris is near
the center of the five-degree wide featured image, a digital composite
of hundreds of exposures that brings out faint gas and dust of the
Integrated Flux Nebula (IFN) all over the frame. The surface of Cepheid
Polaris slowly pulsates, causing the famous star to change its
brightness by a few percent over the course of a few days.

Today: Zoom APOD Lecture hosted by the Amateur Astronomers of
Association of New York
Tomorrow's picture: north nebula
__________________________________________________________________

Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2025 January 15
Earth's moon is shown in full phase. At the top of the frame, appearing
much smaller, is the more distant planet Mars. Please see the
explanation for more detailed information.

Wolf Moon Engulfs Mars
Image Credit & Copyright: Imran Sultan

Explanation: Does the Moon ever engulf Mars? Yes, but only in the sense
that it moves in front, which happens on rare occasions. This happened
just yesterday, though, as seen from some locations in North America
and western Africa. This occultation was notable not only because the
Moon was a fully lit Wolf Moon, but because Mars was near its largest
and brightest, moving to opposition -- the closest to the Earth in its
orbit -- only tomorrow. The engulfing, more formally called an
occultation, typically lasting about an hour. The featured image was
taken from near Chicago, Illinois, USA just as Earth's largest
satellite was angularly moving away from the much more distant red
planet. Our Moon occasionally moves in front of all of the Solar
System's planets. Given the temporary alignment of orbital planes, the
next time our Moon eclipses Mars will be a relatively soon February 9.

Growing Gallery: Moon-Mars Occultation in January 2025
Tomorrow's picture: galactic pinwheel
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2025 January 16

M83: The Southern Pinwheel
Image Credit: CTIO, NOIRLab, DOE, NSF, AURA;
Processing: T. A. Rector (U. Alaska Anchorage/NOIRLab), D. de Martin &
M. Zamani (NOIRLab)

Explanation: Beautiful and bright spiral galaxy M83 lies a some twelve
million light-years away, near the southeastern tip of the very long
constellation Hydra. Prominent spiral arms traced by dark dust lanes
and blue star clusters lend this galaxy its popular name, The Southern
Pinwheel. Still, reddish star forming regions that dot this cosmic
pinwheel's spiral arms have suggested another nickname, the
Thousand-Ruby Galaxy. A mere 40,000 light-years across, smaller than
the Milky Way, M83 is a member of a group of galaxies that includes
active galaxy Centaurus A. In fact, the core of M83 itself is bright at
x-ray energies, showing a high concentration of neutron stars and black
holes left from an intense burst of star formation. This sharp color
image also features spiky foreground Milky Way stars and distant
background galaxies. The image data was captured with the Dark Energy
Camera and Blanco 4-meter telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American
Observatory.

Tomorrow's picture: pixels in space
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2025 January 17

Supernova Remnant Cassiopeia A
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; D. Milisavljevic (Purdue
University), T. Temim (Princeton University), I. De Looze (University
of Gent)

Explanation: Massive stars in our Milky Way Galaxy live spectacular
lives. Collapsing from vast cosmic clouds, their nuclear furnaces
ignite and create heavy elements in their cores. After only a few
million years for the most massive stars, the enriched material is
blasted back into interstellar space where star formation can begin
anew. The expanding debris cloud known as Cassiopeia A is an example of
this final phase of the stellar life cycle. Light from the supernova
explosion that created this remnant would have been first seen in
planet Earth's sky about 350 years ago, although it took that light
11,000 years to reach us. This sharp NIRCam image from the James Webb
Space Telescope shows the still hot filaments and knots in the
supernova remnant. The whitish, smoke-like outer shell of the expanding
blast wave is about 20 light-years across. A series of light echoes
from the massive star's cataclysmic explosion are also identified in
Webb's detailed images of the surrounding interstellar medium.

Tomorrow's picture: light-weekend
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2025 January 18

Full Moon, Full Mars
Image Credit & Copyright: David Bowman

Explanation: On January 13 a Full Moon and a Full Mars were close, both
bright and opposite the Sun in planet Earth's sky. In fact Mars was
occulted, passing behind the Moon, when viewed from some locations in
North America and northwest Africa. As seen from Richmond, Virginia,
USA, this composite image sequence follows the evening lunar
occultation before, during, and after the much anticipated celestial
spectacle. The telescopic time series is constructed from an exposure
made every two minutes while tracking the Moon over the hours
encompassing the event. As a result, the Red Planet's trajectory seems
to follow a gently curved path due to the Moon's slightly different
rate of apparent motion. The next lunar occultation of bright planet
Mars will be on February 9 when the moon is in a waxing gibbous phase.
Lunar occultations are only ever visible from a fraction of the Earth's
surface, though. The February 9 occultation of Mars will be seen from
parts of Russia, China, eastern Canada, Greenland and other (mostly
northern) locations, but a close conjunction of a bright Moon with Mars
will be more widely visible from planet Earth.

Growing Gallery: Moon-Mars Occultation in January 2025
Tomorrow's picture: Touchdown!
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2025 January 19

Titan Touchdown: Huygens Descent Movie
Video Credit: ESA, NASA, JPL, U. Arizona, E. Karkoschka

Explanation: What would it look like to land on Saturn's moon Titan?
The European Space Agency's Huygens probe set down on the Solar
System's cloudiest moon in 2005, and a time-lapse video of its descent
images was created. Huygens separated from the robotic Cassini
spacecraft soon after it achieved orbit around Saturn in late 2004 and
began approaching Titan. For two hours after arriving, Huygens
plummeted toward Titan's surface, recording at first only the shrouded
moon's opaque atmosphere. The computerized truck-tire sized probe soon
deployed a parachute to slow its descent, pierced the thick clouds, and
began transmitting images of a strange surface far below never before
seen in visible light. Landing in a dried sea and surviving for 90
minutes, Huygen's returned unique images of a strange plain of dark
sandy soil strewn with smooth, bright, fist-sized rocks of ice.

Tomorrow's picture: high north
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2025 January 20
A comet is seen near the top of the image. The comet has several tails
visible, some being white but others having different colors. Please
see the explanation for more detailed information.

Comet ATLAS Rounds the Sun
Image Credit: NASA, SOHO Spacecraft, LASCO C3; Processing: Rolando
Ligustri

Explanation: Why does Comet ATLAS have such colorful tails? Last week
Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) passed its closest to the Sun -- well inside
the orbit of Mercury -- and brightened dramatically. Unfortunately, the
comet was then so angularly near the Sun that it was very hard for
humans to see. But NASA's SOHO spacecraft saw it. Pictured is a SOHO
(LASCO C3) image of Comet ATLAS that is a composite of several
different color filters. Of the several tails visible, the central
white tails are likely made of dust and just reflecting back sunlight.
The red, blue, and green tails are likely ion tails with their colors
dominated by light emitted by specific gases that were ejected from the
comet and energized by the Sun. Currently, Comet ATLAS is showing long
tails in southern skies but fading as it moves out of the inner Solar
System.

Growing Gallery: Comet ATLAS (G3)
Tomorrow's picture: long tails
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2025 January 21
The buildings of a city are seen past a dark waterway. Over the city
are some dark clouds and above that, blue sky. In the blue sky, partly
obscured by some of the clouds, is a comet with a very long tail,
running from the middle to the top of the frame. Please see the
explanation for more detailed information.

Comet ATLAS over Bras+¡lia
Image Credit: Frederico Danin

Explanation: What's that in the sky? Above the city, above most clouds,
far in the distance: it's a comet. Pictured, the impressive tail of
Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) was imaged from Bras+¡lia, Brazil four days ago.
Last week the evolving comet rounded the Sun well inside the orbit of
planet Mercury, going so close there was early concern that it might
break up -- and recent evidence that it really did. At one point near
perihelion, Comet ATLAS was so bright that sightings were even reported
during the day -- over the bright sky near the Sun -- by careful
observers. Over the past few days, Comet ATLAS has developed a long
tail that has been partly visible with unaided eyes after sunset, most
notably in Earth's southern hemisphere.

Growing Gallery: Comet ATLAS (G3)
Tomorrow's picture: up north
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2025 January 22
A star field is dominated by a red and blue glowing nebula. This nebula
appears, to some, to have the shape of North America and so is called
the North America Nebula. Please see the explanation for more detailed
information.

The North America Nebula
Image Credit & Copyright: Dimitris Valianos

Explanation: The North America nebula on the sky can do what the North
America continent on Earth cannot -- form stars. Specifically, in
analogy to the Earth-confined continent, the bright part that appears
as the east coast is actually a hot bed of gas, dust, and newly formed
stars known as the Cygnus Wall. The featured image shows the star
forming wall lit and eroded by bright young stars and partly hidden by
the dark dust they have created. The part of the North America nebula
(NGC 7000) shown spans about 50 light years and lies about 1,500 light
years away toward the constellation of the Swan (Cygnus).

Jigsaw Challenge: Astronomy Puzzle of the Day
Tomorrow's picture: little hat, big galaxy
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2025 January 23

NGC 7814: Little Sombrero
Image Credit & Copyright: Mike Selby

Explanation: Point your telescope toward the high flying constellation
Pegasus and you can find this cosmic expanse of Milky Way stars and
distant galaxies. NGC 7814 is centered in the sharp field of view that
would almost be covered by a full moon. NGC 7814 is sometimes called
the Little Sombrero for its resemblance to the brighter more famous
M104, the Sombrero Galaxy. Both Sombrero and Little Sombrero are spiral
galaxies seen edge-on, and both have extensive halos and central bulges
cut by a thin disk with thinner dust lanes in silhouette. In fact, NGC
7814 is some 40 million light-years away and an estimated 60,000
light-years across. That actually makes the Little Sombrero about the
same physical size as its better known namesake, appearing smaller and
fainter only because it is farther away.

Tomorrow's picture: a tail and a telescope
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2025 January 24

Comet G3 ATLAS: a Tail and a Telescope
Image Credit & Copyright: Yuri Beletsky (Carnegie Las Campanas
Observatory, TWAN)

Explanation: Comet C/2024 G3 ATLAS has made a dramatic appearance in
planet Earth's skies. A visitor from the distant Oort Cloud, the comet
reached its perihelion on January 13. On January 19, the bright comet
was captured here from ESO Paranal Observatory in the Atacama desert in
Chile. Sporting spectacular sweeping dust tails, this comet ATLAS is
setting in the southern hemisphere twilight and was clearly visible to
the unaided eye. In the foreground is the closed shell of one of the
observatory's famous auxiliary telescopes. Still wowing southern
hemisphere observers, the comet's bright coma has become diffuse, its
icy nucleus apparently disintegrating following its close approach to
the Sun.

Growing Gallery: Comet ATLAS (G3)
Tomorrow's picture: stardust
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2025 January 25

Stardust in the Perseus Molecular Cloud
Image Credit & Copyright: Jeff Schilling

Explanation: Clouds of stardust drift through this deep skyscape,
across the Perseus molecular cloud some 850 light-years away. Dusty
nebulae reflecting light from embedded young stars stand out in the
nearly 4 degree wide field of view. With a characteristic bluish color
reflection nebula NGC 1333 is prominent near center. Hints of
contrasting red emission from Herbig-Haro objects, the jets and shocked
glowing gas emanating from recently formed stars, are scattered across
the dusty expanse. While many stars are forming in the molecular cloud,
most are obscured at visible wavelengths by the pervasive dust. The
chaotic environment surrounding NGC 1333 may be similar to one in which
our own Sun formed over 4.5 billion years ago. At the estimated
distance of the Perseus molecular cloud, this cosmic scene would span
about 80 light-years.

Growing Gallery: Comet ATLAS (G3)
Tomorrow's picture: comet tails
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2025 January 26
A dark sloping hill is seen at the bottom with a bright comet with many
tails visible above it, taking up most of the frame. The tails closest
to the slope are the most dim. Please see the explanation for more
detailed information.

The Many Tails of Comet G3 ATLAS
Image Credit & Copyright: Martin Ma+íek (FZU, Czech Academy of Sciences)
& Jakub Ku+Ö+ík

Explanation: Why does this comet have so many tails? C/2024 G3 (ATLAS)
has developed several long and intricate tails visible from Earth's
southern hemisphere over the past two weeks. Many observers reported
seeing the impressive comet without any optical aid above the western
horizon just after sunset. At least six different tails appear in the
featured image captured five days ago from the dark skies above Paranal
Observatory in Chile. One possible cause for the multiple tails is dust
and gas being expelled from the comet's rotating nucleus. The outward
push of the Sun's complex solar wind may also play a role. The huge
iceberg-like nucleus of Comet ATLAS appears to have broken up near its
closest approach to the Sun two weeks ago. Unfortunately, Comet ATLAS
and its tails are expected to fade significantly over the coming weeks.

Your Sky Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday?
(post 1995)
Tomorrow's picture: half dome stars
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2025 January 27
A cluster of bright blue stars is seen on the upper right while an
unusual dome-like mountain occupies most of the frame. Please see the
explanation for more detailed information.

Pleiades over Half Dome
Image Credit & Copyright: Dheera Venkatraman

Explanation: Stars come in bunches. The most famous bunch of stars on
the sky is the Pleiades, a bright cluster that can be easily seen with
the unaided eye. The Pleiades lies only about 450 light years away,
formed about 100 million years ago, and will likely last about another
250 million years. Our Sun was likely born in a star cluster, but now,
being about 4.5 billion years old, its stellar birth companions have
long since dispersed. The Pleiades star cluster is pictured over Half
Dome, a famous rock structure in Yosemite National Park in California,
USA. The featured image is a composite of 28 foreground exposures and
174 images of the stellar background, all taken from the same location
and by the same camera on the same night in October 2019. After
calculating the timing of a future juxtaposition of the Pleiades and
Half Dome, the astrophotographer was unexpectedly rewarded by an
electrical blackout, making the background sky unusually dark.

Astrophysicists: Browse 3,500+ codes in the Astrophysics Source Code
Library
Tomorrow's picture: big comet
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2025 January 28
A foreground grass field is shown below a distant field of stars. On
the grass field are some trees. Dwarfing the trees, in the sky, is a
comet with a long tail. Please see the explanation for more detailed
information.

Comet G3 ATLAS over Uruguay
Image Credit & Copyright: Mauricio Salazar

Explanation: Comets can be huge. When far from the Sun, a comet's size
usually refers to its hard nucleus of ice and rock, which typically
spans a few kilometers -- smaller than even a small moon. When nearing
the Sun, however, this nucleus can eject dust and gas and leave a thin
tail that can spread to an enormous length -- even greater than the
distance between the Earth and the Sun. Pictured, C/2024 G3 (ATLAS)
sports a tail of sunlight-reflecting dust and glowing gas that spans
several times the apparent size of a full moon, appearing even larger
on long duration camera images than to the unaided eye. The featured
image shows impressive Comet ATLAS over trees and a grass field in
Sierras de Mahoma, San Jose, Uruguay about a week ago. After being
prominent in the sunset skies of Earth's southern hemisphere, Comet G3
ATLAS is now fading as it moves away from the Sun, making its
impressive tails increasingly hard to see.

Gallery: Comet ATLAS (G3)
Tomorrow's picture: star circles
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2025 January 29
A bright spot at the center is surrounded by many concentric rings. The
rings are nearly -- but not exactly -- circular in appearance. Please
see the explanation for more detailed information.

Dust Shells around WR 140 from Webb
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, E. Lieb (U. Denver), R. Lau (NSF
NOIRLab), J. Hoffman (U. Denver)

Explanation: What are those strange rings? Rich in dust, the rings are
likely 3D shells -- but how they were created remains a topic of
research. Where they were created is well known: in a binary star
system that lies about 6,000 light years away toward the constellation
of the Swan (Cygnus) -- a system dominated by the Wolf-Rayet star WR
140. Wolf-Rayet stars are massive, bright, and known for their
tumultuous winds. They are also known for creating and dispersing heavy
elements such as carbon, which is a building block of interstellar
dust. The other star in the binary is also bright and massive -- but
not as active. The two great stars joust in an oblong orbit as they
approach each other about every eight years. When at closest approach,
the X-ray emission from the system increases, as, apparently, does the
dust expelled into space -- creating another shell. The featured
infrared image by the Webb Space Telescope resolves greater details and
more dust shells than ever before. Images taken over consecutive years
show the shells moving outward.

Tomorrow's picture: open space
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2025 January 30

Hydrogen Clouds of M33
Image Credit & Copyright: Pea Mauro

Explanation: Gorgeous spiral galaxy Messier 33 seems to have more than
its fair share of glowing hydrogen gas. A prominent member of the local
group of galaxies, M33 is also known as the Triangulum Galaxy and lies
a mere 3 million light-years away. The galaxy's central 60,000
light-years or so are shown in this sharp galaxy portrait. The portrait
features M33's reddish ionized hydrogen clouds or HII regions.
Sprawling along loose spiral arms that wind toward the core, M33's
giant HII regions are some of the largest known stellar nurseries,
sites of the formation of short-lived but very massive stars. Intense
ultraviolet radiation from the luminous, massive stars ionizes the
surrounding hydrogen gas and ultimately produces the characteristic red
glow. In this image, broadband data were combined with narrowband data
recorded through a filter that transmits the light of the strongest
visible hydrogen and oxygen emission lines.

Tomorrow's picture: pixels in space
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2025 January 31

The Variable Nebula NGC 2261
Image Credit & Copyright: Tommy Lease (Denver Astronomical Society)

Explanation: The interstellar cloud of dust and gas captured in this
sharp telescopic snapshot is seen to change its appearance noticeably
over periods as short as a few weeks. Discovered over 200 years ago and
cataloged as NGC 2261, bright star R Monocerotis lies at the tip of the
fan-shaped nebula. About one light-year across and 2500 light-years
away, NGC 2261 was studied early last century by astronomer Edwin
Hubble and the mysterious cosmic cloud is now more famous as Hubble's
Variable Nebula. So what makes Hubble's nebula vary? NGC 2261 is
composed of a dusty reflection nebula fanning out from the star R
Monocerotis. The leading variability explanation holds that dense knots
of obscuring dust pass close to R Mon and cast moving shadows across
the dust clouds in the rest of Hubble's Variable Nebula.

Tomorrow's picture: light-weekend
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2025 February 1

Nacreous Clouds over Sweden
Image Credit & Copyright: Vojan H++fer

Explanation: Vivid and lustrous, wafting iridescent waves of color wash
across this skyscape from northern Sweden. Known as nacreous clouds or
mother-of-pearl clouds, they are rare. But their unforgettable
appearance was captured in this snapshot on January 12 with the Sun
just below the local horizon. A type of polar stratospheric cloud, they
form when unusually cold temperatures in the usually cloudless lower
stratosphere form ice crystals. Still sunlit at altitudes of around 15
to 25 kilometers, the clouds diffract the sunlight even when the Sun
itself is hidden from direct view.

Tomorrow's picture: comet disintegrates
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2025 February 2
A series of comet images is shown. On the far left the image shows
Comet G3 ATLAS with a bright central concentration at its head near the
bottom of the frame. By the far right, this central concentration is
nearly gone. Please see the explanation for more detailed information.

Comet G3 ATLAS Disintegrates
Image Credit: Lionel Majzik

Explanation: What's happening to Comet G3 ATLAS? After passing near the
Sun in mid-January, the head of the comet has become dimmer and dimmer.
By late January, Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) had become a headless wonder
-- even though it continued to show impressive tails after sunset in
the skies of Earth's Southern Hemisphere. Pictured are images of Comet
G3 ATLAS on successive January nights taken from R+¡o Hurtado, Chile.
Clearly, the comet's head is brighter and more centrally condensed on
the earlier days (left) than on later days (right). A key reason is
likely that the comet's nucleus of ice and rock, at the head's center,
has fragmented. Comet G3 ATLAS passed well inside the orbit of planet
Mercury when at its solar closest, a distance that where heat destroys
many comets. Some of comet G3 ATLAS' scattering remains will continue
to orbit the Sun.

Gallery: Comet G3 ATLAS
Tomorrow's picture: star-sized wind machine
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2025 February 3
A starfield is shown with a large spherical nebula in the center. The
nebula shows a great deal of internal structure. Please see the
explanation for more detailed information.

Wolf-Rayet Star 124: Stellar Wind Machine
Image Credit: Hubble Legacy Archive, NASA, ESA; Processing & License:
Judy Schmidt

Explanation: Some stars explode in slow motion. Rare, massive
Wolf-Rayet stars are so tumultuous and hot that they are slowly
disintegrating right before our telescopes. Glowing gas globs each
typically over 30 times more massive than the Earth are being expelled
by violent stellar winds. Wolf-Rayet star WR 124, visible near the
featured image center and spanning six light years across, is thus
creating the surrounding nebula known as M1-67. Details of why this
star has been slowly blowing itself apart over the past 20,000 years
remains a topic of research. WR 124 lies 15,000 light-years away
towards the constellation of the Arrow (Sagitta). The fate of any given
Wolf-Rayet star likely depends on how massive it is, but many are
thought to end their lives with spectacular explosions such as
supernovas or gamma-ray bursts.

Explore Your Universe: Random APOD Generator
Tomorrow's picture: anti-rainbow
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2025 February 4
A rainbow is pictured over the sea between an island and land. A series
of light rays appears to connect the horizon to the rainbow. Please see
the explanation for more detailed information.

Anticrepuscular Rays: A Rainbow Fan over Spain
Image Credit & Copyright: Julene Eiguren

Explanation: Yes, but can your rainbow do this? Late in the day, the
Sun set as usual toward the west. However, on this day, the more
interesting display was 180 degrees around -- toward the east. There,
not only was a rainbow visible, but an impressive display of
anticrepuscular rays from the rainbow's center. In the featured image
from Lekeitio in northern Spain, the Sun is behind the camera. The
rainbow resulted from sunlight reflecting back from falling rain.
Anticrepuscular rays result from sunlight, blocked by some clouds,
going all the way around the sky, overhead, and appearing to converge
on the opposite horizon -- an optical illusion. Rainbows by themselves
can be exciting to see, and anticrepuscular rays a rare treat, but
capturing them both together is even more unusual -- and can look both
serene and surreal.

Jigsaw Challenge: Astronomy Puzzle of the Day
Tomorrow's picture: comet set
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2025 February 5

Comet G3 ATLAS Setting over a Chilean Hill
Video Credit & Copyright: Gabriel Mu+#oz

Explanation: Where is Comet ATLAS going? In the featured time-lapse
video, the comet is not itself moving very much, but the Earth's
rotation makes it appear to be setting over a hill. The Comet C/2024 G3
(ATLAS) sequence was captured with an ordinary camera on January 22
from the Araucan+¡a Region in central Chile. Comet ATLAS has been an
impressive site in the evening skies of Earth's Southern Hemisphere
over the past few weeks, so bright and awe-inspiring that it may
eventually become known as the Great Comet of 2025. Unfortunately,
Comet G3 ATLAS is not going anywhere anymore because its central
nucleus broke up during its close pass to the Sun last month. Some of
the comet's scattered remains of rocks and ice will continue to orbit
the Sun, some in nearly the same outward section of the orbit that the
comet's nucleus would have taken.

Tomorrow's picture: open space
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2025 February 6

IC 2574: Coddington's Nebula
Image Credit & Copyright: Lorand Fenyes

Explanation: Grand spiral galaxies often seem to get all the glory,
flaunting their young, bright, blue star clusters in beautiful,
symmetric spiral arms. But small, irregular galaxies form stars too. In
fact dwarf galaxy IC 2574 shows clear evidence of intense star forming
activity in its telltale reddish regions of glowing hydrogen gas. Just
as in spiral galaxies, the turbulent star-forming regions in IC 2574
are churned by stellar winds and supernova explosions spewing material
into the galaxy's interstellar medium and triggering further star
formation. A mere 12 million light-years distant, IC 2574 is part of
the M81 group of galaxies, seen toward the northern constellation Ursa
Major. Also known as Coddington's Nebula, the lovely island universe is
about 50,000 light-years across, discovered by American astronomer
Edwin Coddington in 1898.

Tomorrow's picture: pixels in space
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2025 February 7

LEDA 1313424: The Bullseye Galaxy
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Imad Pasha (Yale), Pieter van Dokkum (Yale)

Explanation: The giant galaxy cataloged as LEDA 1313424 is about two
and a half times the size of our own Milky Way. Its remarkable
appearance in this recently released Hubble Space Telescope image
strongly suggests its nickname "The Bullseye Galaxy". Known as a
collisional ring galaxy it has nine rings confirmed by telescopic
observations, rippling from its center like waves from a pebble dropped
into a pond. Of course, the pebble dropped into the Bullseye galaxy was
a galaxy itself. Telescopic observations identify the blue dwarf galaxy
at center-left as the likely collider, passing through the giant
galaxy's center and forming concentric rings in the wake of their
gravitational interaction. The Bullseye Galaxy lies some 567 million
light-years away toward the constellation Pisces. At that distance,
this stunning Hubble image would span about 530,000 light-years.

Tomorrow's picture: light-weekend
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2025 February 8

A Conjunction of Crescents
Image Credit & Copyright: Aldo S. Kleiman

Explanation: A waxing crescent Moon and a waning crescent Venus are
found at opposite corners of this twilight telephoto field of view. The
close conjunction of the two brightest celestial beacons in planet
Earth's western evening sky was captured on February 1 from Rosario,
Argentina. On that date, the slender crescent Moon was about 3 days
old. But the Moon's visible sunlit crescent will grow to a bright Full
Moon by February 14. Like the Moon, Venus cycles through phases as it
orbits the Sun. And while its visible sunlit crescent narrows, the
inner planet's apparent size increases as it gets closer to Earth. In a
Valentine from the Solar System, Venus, named for the Roman goddess of
Love, will also reach its peak brightness in planet Earth's evening
skies around February 14.

Tomorrow's picture: southern skyscape
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2025 February 9
A flat landscape is shown at night that appears mostly brown. Numerous
unusual rock spires are seen rising from the group. Above, a full star
field is seen with the arch of our Milky Way Galaxy curving from left
to right. Please see the explanation for more detailed information.

Milky Way over the Australian Pinnacles
Image Credit & Copyright: Michael Goh

Explanation: What strange world is this? Earth. In the foreground of
the featured image are the Pinnacles, unusual rock spires in Nambung
National Park in Western Australia. Made of ancient sea shells
(limestone), how these human-sized picturesque spires formed remains
unknown. In the background, just past the end of the central Pinnacle,
is a bright crescent Moon. The eerie glow around the Moon is mostly
zodiacal light, sunlight reflected by dust grains orbiting between the
planets in the Solar System. Arching across the top is the central band
of our Milky Way Galaxy. Many famous stars and nebulas are also visible
in the background night sky. The featured 29-panel panorama was taken
and composed in 2015 September after detailed planning that involved
the Moon, the rock spires, and their corresponding shadows. Even so,
the strong zodiacal light was a pleasant surprise.

Your Sky Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday?
(post 1995)
Tomorrow's picture: glow bird
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2025 February 10
A snowy landscape sits below a star filled sky. Dominating the frame is
a large aurora in red, green, yellow, purple, white. Please see the
explanation for more detailed information.

Auroral Hummingbird over Norway
Image Credit & Copyright: Mickael Coulon

Explanation: Is this the largest hummingbird ever? Although it may look
like a popular fluttering nectarivore, what is pictured is actually a
beautifully detailed and colorful aurora, complete with rays
reminiscent of feathers. This aurora was so bright that it was visible
to the unaided eye during blue hour -- just after sunset when the sky
appears a darkening blue. However, the aurora only looked like a
hummingbird through a sensitive camera able to pick up faint glows. As
reds typically occurring higher in the Earth's atmosphere than the
greens, the real 3D shape of this aurora would likely appear
unfamiliar. Auroras are created when an explosion on the Sun causes
high energy particles to flow into the Earth's atmosphere and excite
atoms and molecules of nitrogen and oxygen. The featured image was
captured about two weeks ago above Lyngseidt, Norway.

Tomorrow's picture: fly high
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2025 February 11
A star field has a red diffuse glow on the right-hand side. Distinct
nebulas appear in the center and on the lower left. Please see the
explanation for more detailed information.

The Spider and the Fly
Image Credit & Copyright: Dave Boddington

Explanation: Will the spider ever catch the fly? Not if both are large
emission nebulas toward the constellation of the Charioteer (Auriga).
The spider-shaped gas cloud in the image center is actually an emission
nebula labelled IC 417, while the smaller fly-shaped cloud on the left
is dubbed NGC 1931 and is both an emission nebula and a reflection
nebula. About 10,000 light-years distant, both nebulas harbor young
star clusters. For scale, the more compact NGC 1931 (Fly) is about 10
light-years across. The featured deep image, captured over 20 hours
during late January in Berkshire UK, also shows more diffuse and
red-glowing interstellar gas and dust.

Explore Your Universe: Random APOD Generator
Tomorrow's picture: asteroid revolution
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2025 February 12

Asteroid Bennu Holds the Building Blocks of Life
Video Credit: Data: NASA, SVS, U. Arizona, CSA, York U., MDA;
Visualizer: Kel Elkins (lead, SVS); Text: Ogetay Kayali (Michigan Tech
U.)

Explanation: What can a space rock tell us about life on Earth? NASA's
OSIRIS-REx spacecraft made a careful approach to the near-Earth
asteroid 101955 Bennu in October of 2020 to collect surface samples. In
September 2023, the robotic spaceship returned these samples to Earth.
A recent analysis has shown, surprisingly, that the samples contained
14 out of the 20 known amino acids that are the essential building
blocks of life. The presence of the amino acids re-introduces a big
question: Could life have originated in space? However, the protein
building blocks themselves held another surprise -- they contained an
even mixture of left-handed and right-handed amino acids -- in contrast
to our Earth which only has left-handed ones. This raises another big
question: Why does life on Earth have only left-handed amino acids?
Research on this is sure to continue.

Tomorrow's picture: interstellar dust clouds
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2025 February 13

Reflections on VdB 31
Image Credit & Copyright: Roberto Marinoni

Explanation: Riding high in the constellation of Auriga, beautiful,
blue VdB 31 is the 31st object in Sidney van den Bergh's 1966 catalog
of reflection nebulae. It shares this well-composed celestial still
life with dark, obscuring clouds B26, B27, and B28, recorded in Edward
E. Barnard's 1919 catalog of dark markings in the sky. All are these
nebulae are interstellar dust clouds. Barnard's dark nebulae block the
light from background stars. For VdB 31 the dust preferentially
reflects bluish starlight from embedded, hot, variable star AB Aurigae.
Exploring the environs of AB Aurigae with the Hubble Space Telescope
has revealed the several million year young star is itself surrounded
by a flattened dusty disk with evidence for the ongoing formation of a
planetary system. AB Aurigae is about 470 light-years away. At that
distance this cosmic canvas would span about eight light-years.

Tomorrow's picture: when roses are red
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2025 February 14

A Cosmic Rose: NGC 2237 in Monoceros
Image Credit & Copyright: Harry Karamitsos

Explanation: The Rosette Nebula, NGC 2237, is not the only cosmic cloud
of gas and dust to evoke the imagery of flowers, but it is probably the
most famous. At the edge of a large molecular cloud in Monoceros some
5,000 light years away, the petals of this cosmic rose are actually a
stellar nursery. The lovely, symmetric shape is sculpted by the winds
and radiation from its central cluster of hot young, O-type stars.
Stars in the energetic cluster, cataloged as NGC 2244, are only a few
million years young, while the central cavity in the Rosette Nebula, is
about 50 light-years in diameter. The nebula can be seen with a small
telescope toward the constellation of Monoceros, the Unicorn. This
natural appearing telescopic portrait of the Rosette Nebula was made
using broadband color filters, but sometimes roses aren't red.

Tomorrow's picture: light-weekend
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2025 February 15

Parhelia at Abisko
Image Credit & Copyright: Felipe Menzella

Explanation: Three suns seem to hug the horizon in this otherworldly
winterscape. But the evocative scene was captured during a February 3rd
snowmobile exploration of the mountainous region around Abisko National
Park, northern Sweden, planet Earth. The two bright spots on either
side of Earth's Sun are parhelia (singular parhelion), also known as
mock suns or sun dogs. The parhelia are caused by hexagonal ice
crystals suspended in the hazy atmosphere that reflect and refract
sunlight. Commonly seen in winter and at high latitudes, the bright
parhelia lie along the visible 22 degree ice halo of the Sun.

Tomorrow's picture: swooping jupiter
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2025 February 16

Perijove 11: Passing Jupiter
Video Credit & License: NASA, Juno, SwRI, MSSS, Gerald Eichstadt;
Music: Moonlight Sonata (Ludwig van Beethoven)

Explanation: Here comes Jupiter. NASA's robotic spacecraft Juno is
continuing on its highly elongated orbits around our Solar System's
largest planet. The featured video is from perijove 11 in early 2018,
the eleventh time Juno passed near Jupiter since it arrived in
mid-2016. This time-lapse, color-enhanced movie covers about four hours
and morphs between 36 JunoCam images. The video begins with Jupiter
rising as Juno approaches from the north. As Juno reaches its closest
view -- from about 3,500 kilometers over Jupiter's cloud tops -- the
spacecraft captures the great planet in tremendous detail. Juno passes
light zones and dark belts of clouds that circle the planet, as well as
numerous swirling circular storms, many of which are larger than
hurricanes on Earth. After the perijove, Jupiter recedes into the
distance, then displaying the unusual clouds that appear over Jupiter's
south. To get desired science data, Juno swoops so close to Jupiter
that its instruments are exposed to very high levels of radiation.

Tomorrow's picture: big cloud
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2025 February 17
Houses are seen on a street below the night sky. In the sky is a bright
light plume that looks like the outline of a giant fish. Please see the
explanation for more detailed information.

SpaceX Rocket Launch Plume over California
Image Credit & Copyright: Martin LaMontagne

Explanation: What's happened to the sky? Last Monday, the photogenic
launch plume from a SpaceX rocket launch created quite a spectacle over
parts of southern California and Arizona. Looking at times like a giant
space fish, the impressive rocket launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base
near Lompoc, California, was so bright because it was backlit by the
setting Sun. The Falcon 9 rocket successfully delivered to low Earth
orbit 23 Starlink communications satellites. The plume from the first
stage is seen on the right, while the soaring upper stage rocket is
seen at the apex of the plume toward the left. Venus appears at the top
of the frame, while a bright streetlight shines on the far right. The
featured image was captured toward the west after sunset from near
Phoenix, Arizona.

Tomorrow's picture: Thor birds
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2025 February 18
A tall starscape appears to have two bright nebulas. The large one at
the top is colored mostly red and is known as the Seagull Nebula. The
small one near the bottom right is known as Thor's Helmet. Please see
the explanation for more detailed information.

Thor's Helmet versus the Seagull
Image Credit & Copyright: Nicolas Martino, Adrien Soto, Louis Leroux &
Yann Sainty

Explanation: Seen as a seagull and a duck, these nebulae are not the
only cosmic clouds to evoke images of flight. But both are winging
their way across this broad celestial landscape, spanning almost 7
degrees across planet Earth's night sky toward the constellation of the
Big Dog (Canis Major). The expansive Seagull (top center) is itself
composed of two major cataloged emission nebulas. Brighter NGC 2327
forms the head with the more diffuse IC 2177 as the wings and body.
Impressively, the Seagull's wingspan would correspond to about 250
light-years at the nebula's estimated distance of 3,800 light-years. At
the lower right, the Duck appears much more compact and would span only
about 50 light-years given its 15,000 light-year distance estimate.
Blown by energetic winds from an extremely massive, hot star near its
center, the Duck nebula is cataloged as NGC 2359. Of course, the Duck's
thick body and winged appendages also lend it the slightly more
dramatic popular moniker, Thor's Helmet.

Portal Universe: Random APOD Generator
Tomorrow's picture: star system forming
__________________________________________________________________

Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2025 February 19
A dark field has a single, colorful, blurry structure in its center.
Red-colored jets extend out from the center toward the top and bottom
of the frame. A dark disk covers the center. Blue outflows appear on
both sides of the horizontal disk. To the lower left, a larger blue
outflow extends. Please see the explanation for more detailed
information.

HH 30: A Star System with Planets Now Forming
Image Credit: James Webb Space Telescope, ESA, NASA & CSA, R. Tazaki et
al.

Explanation: How do stars and planets form? New clues have been found
in the protoplanetary system Herbig-Haro 30 by the James Webb Space
Telescope in concert with Hubble and the Earth-bound ALMA. The
observations show, among other things, that large dust grains are more
concentrated into a central disk where they can form planets. The
featured image from Webb shows many attributes of the active HH-30
system. Jets of particles are being expelled vertically, shown in red,
while a dark dust-rich disk is seen across the center, blocking the
light from the star or stars still forming there. Blue-reflecting dust
is seen in a parabolic arc above and below the central disk, although
why a tail appears on the lower left is currently unknown. Studying how
planets form in HH 30 can help astronomers better understand how
planets in our own Solar System once formed, including our Earth.

Tomorrow's picture: M87
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2025 February 20

Messier 87
Image Credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team

Explanation: Enormous elliptical galaxy Messier 87 is about 50 million
light-years away. Also known as NGC 4486, the giant galaxy holds
trillions of stars compared to the mere billions of stars in our large
spiral Milky Way. M87 reigns as the large central elliptical galaxy in
the Virgo galaxy cluster. An energetic jet from the giant galaxy's core
is seen to stretch outward for about 5,000 light-years in this sharp
optical and near-infrared view from the Hubble Space Telescope. In
fact, the cosmic blow torch is seen across the electromagnetic spectrum
from gamma-rays to radio wavelengths. Its ultimate power source is
M87's central, supermassive black hole. An image of this monster in the
middle of M87 has been captured by planet Earth's Event Horizon
Telescope.

Tomorrow's picture: our friendly neighbor
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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written by a professional astronomer.

2025 February 21

Hubble's Andromeda Galaxy Mosaic
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Mission,
B. F. Williams (Univ Washington), Z. Chen (Univ Washington), L. C.
Johnson (Northwestern),
Processing; Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

Explanation: The largest photomosaic ever assembled from Hubble Space
Telescope image data is a panoramic view of our neighboring spiral
Andromeda Galaxy. With 600 overlapping frames assembled from
observations made from July 2010 to December 2022, the full Hubble
Andromeda Galaxy mosaic spans almost six full moons across planet
Earth's sky. A cropped version shown above is nearly two full moons
across and partially covers Andromeda's core and inner spiral arms.
Also known as M31, the Andromeda Galaxy is 2.5 million light-years
away. That makes it the closest large spiral galaxy to our own Milky
Way. Our perspective on the spiral Milky Way is anchored to the view
from the location of the Sun, a star found within the Milky Way's
galactic disk. But Hubble's magnificent Andromeda mosaic offers an
expansive view of a large spiral galaxy from the outside looking in.
Hubble's comprehensive, detailed data set extending across the
Andromeda Galaxy will allow astronomers to make an unprecedented
holistic exploration of the mysteries of spiral galaxy structure and
evolution.

Tomorrow's picture: light-weekend
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2025 February 22

Rima Hyginus
Image Credit & Copyright: Vincenzo Mirabella

Explanation: Rima Hyginus is a spectacular fissure, some 220 kilometers
long, found near the center of the lunar near side. Easy to spot in
telescopic views of the Moon, it stretches top left to bottom right
across this lunar closeup. The image was made with exaggerated colors
that reflect the mineral composition of the lunar soil. Hyginus crater
lies near the center of the narrow lunar surface groove. About 10
kilometers in diameter, the low-walled crater is a volcanic caldera,
one of the larger non-impact craters on the lunar surface. Dotted with
small pits formed by surface collapse, Hyginus rima itself was likely
created by stresses due to internal magma upwelling and collapse along
a long surface fault. The intriguing region was a candidate landing
site for the canceled Apollo 19 mission.

Tomorrow's picture: northern Saturn
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2025 February 23
The planet Saturn is seen very close up. The clouds are tinted beige
and tan, while parts of rings are seen at the top and bottom of the
image. At the north pole of Saturn at the top, a blue-tinted hexagon is
visible. Please see the explanation for more detailed information.

Saturn in Infrared from Cassini
Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, SSI; Processing: Maksim Kakitsev

Explanation: Saturn looks slightly different in infrared light. Bands
of clouds show great structure, including long stretching storms. Also
quite striking in infrared is the unusual hexagonal cloud pattern
surrounding Saturn's North Pole. Each side of the dark hexagon spans
roughly the width of our Earth. The hexagon's existence was not
predicted, and its origin and likely stability remain a topics of
research. Saturn's famous rings circle the planet and cast shadows
below the equator. The featured image was taken by the robotic Cassini
spacecraft in 2014 in several infrared colors. In 2017 September, the
Cassini mission was brought to a dramatic conclusion when the
spacecraft was directed to dive into the ringed giant.

Your Sky Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday?
(post 1995)
Tomorrow's picture: lava sky
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2025 February 24
A slope of volcano is pictured with red glowing lava running down its
side. A dark starry sky is in the background. Up into the sky a red
column is visible. Please see the explanation for more detailed
information.

Light Pillar over Erupting Etna
Image Credit & Copyright: Davide Cali+#

Explanation: Can a lava flow extend into the sky? No, but light from
the lava flow can. One effect is something quite unusual -- a volcanic
light pillar. More typically, light pillars are caused by sunlight and
so appear as a bright column that extends upward above a rising or
setting Sun. Alternatively, other light pillars -- some quite colorful
-- have been recorded above street and house lights. This light pillar,
though, was illuminated by the red light emitted by the glowing magma
of an erupting volcano. The volcano is Italy's Mount Etna, and the
featured image was captured with a single shot during an early morning
in mid-February. Freezing temperatures above the volcano's lava flow
created ice-crystals either in the air above the volcano or in
condensed water vapor expelled by Mount Etna. These ice crystals --
mostly flat toward the ground but fluttering -- then reflected away
light from the volcano's caldera.

Tomorrow's picture: stars between curtains
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2025 February 25
A starscape is shown with red filaments running diagonally from the
lower left to the upper right. Many bright blue stars are visible
across the center of the frame. Please see the explanation for more
detailed information.

M41: The Little Beehive Star Cluster
Image Credit & Copyright: Xinran Li

Explanation: Why are there so many bright blue stars? Stars are usually
born in clusters, and the brightest and most massive of these stars
typically glow blue. Less-bright, non-blue stars like our Sun surely
also exist in this M41 star cluster but are harder to see. A few bright
orange-appearing red giant stars are visible. The red-light filaments
are emitted by diffuse hydrogen gas, a color that was specifically
filtered and enhanced in this image. In a hundred million years or so,
the bright blue stars will have exploded in supernovas and disappeared,
while the slightly different trajectories of the fainter stars will
cause this picturesque open cluster to disperse. Similarly, billions of
years ago, our own Sun was likely born into a star cluster like M41,
but it has long since drifted apart from its sister stars. The featured
image was captured over four hours with Chilescope T2 in Chile.

Tomorrow's picture: Einstein's ring
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply.
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2025 February 26
A cluster of galaxies is shown with many galaxies around the cluster
center. A close look at this center shows that it is encompassed by a
narrow ring of light. Please see the explanation for more detailed
information.

Einstein Ring Surrounds Nearby Galaxy Center
Image Credit & Copyright: ESA, NASA, Euclid Consortium; Processing:
J.-C. Cuillandre, G. Anselmi, T. Li

Explanation: Do you see the ring? If you look very closely at the
center of the featured galaxy NGC 6505, a ring becomes evident. It is
the gravity of NGC 6505, the nearby (z = 0.042) elliptical galaxy that
you can easily see, that is magnifying and distorting the image of a
distant galaxy into a complete circle. To create a complete Einstein
ring there must be perfect alignment of the nearby galaxy's center and
part of the background galaxy. Analysis of this ring and the multiple
images of the background galaxy help to determine the mass and fraction
of dark matter in NGC 6505's center, as well as uncover previously
unseen details in the distorted galaxy. The featured image was captured
by ESA's Earth-orbiting Euclid telescope in 2023 and released earlier
this month.

Tomorrow's picture: open space
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply.
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2025 May 1

MESSENGER's Last Day on Mercury
Image Credit: NASA, Johns Hopkins Univ. APL, Arizona State Univ., CIW

Explanation: The first to orbit inner planet Mercury, the MESSENGER
spacecraft came to rest on this region of Mercury's surface on April
30, 2015. Constructed from MESSENGER image and laser altimeter data,
the projected scene looks north over the northeastern rim of the broad,
lava filled Shakespeare basin. The large, 48 kilometer (30 mile) wide
crater Janacek is near the upper left edge. Terrain height is color
coded with red regions about 3 kilometers above blue ones. MESSENGER'S
final orbit was predicted to end near the center, with the spacecraft
impacting the surface at nearly 4 kilometers per second (over 8,700
miles per hour) and creating a new crater about 16 meters (52 feet) in
diameter. The impact on the far side of Mercury was not observed by
telescopes, but confirmed when no signal was detected from the
spacecraft given time to emerge from behind the planet. Launched in
2004, the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemisty and Ranging
spacecraft completed over 4,000 orbits after reaching the Solar
System's innermost planet in 2011.

Tomorrow's picture: burning hydrogen
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
written by a professional astronomer.

2025 May 2
See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest
resolution version available.

Young Star Cluster NGC 346
Science - NASA, ESA, CSA, Olivia C. Jones (UK ATC), Guido De Marchi
(ESTEC), Margaret Meixner (USRA)
Processing - Alyssa Pagan (STScI), Nolan Habel (USRA), Laura Lenki-ç
(USRA), Laurie E. U. Chu (NASA Ames)

Explanation: The most massive young star cluster in the Small
Magellanic Cloud is NGC 346, embedded in our small satellite galaxy's
largest star forming region some 210,000 light-years distant. Of course
the massive stars of NGC 346 are short lived, but very energetic. Their
winds and radiation sculpt the edges of the region's dusty molecular
cloud triggering star-formation within. The star forming region also
appears to contain a large population of infant stars. A mere 3 to 5
million years old and not yet burning hydrogen in their cores, the
infant stars are strewn about the embedded star cluster. This
spectacular infrared view of NGC 346 is from the James Webb Space
Telescope's NIRcam. Emission from atomic hydrogen ionized by the
massive stars' energetic radiation as well as molecular hydrogen and
dust in the star-forming molecular cloud is detailed in pink and orange
hues. Webb's sharp image of the young star-forming region spans 240
light-years at the distance of the Small Magellanic Cloud.

Tomorrow's picture: Titan's Shangra-La
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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written by a professional astronomer.

2025 May 3

Titan: Moon over Saturn
Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, Space Science Institute

Explanation: Like Earth's moon, Saturn's largest moon Titan is locked
in synchronous rotation with its planet. This mosaic of images recorded
by the Cassini spacecraft in May of 2012 shows its anti-Saturn side,
the side always facing away from the ringed gas giant. The only moon in
the solar system with a dense atmosphere, Titan is the only solar
system world besides Earth known to have standing bodies of liquid on
its surface and an earthlike cycle of liquid rain and evaporation. Its
high altitude layer of atmospheric haze is evident in the Cassini view
of the 5,000 kilometer diameter moon over Saturn's rings and cloud
tops. Near center is the dark dune-filled region known as Shangri-La.
The Cassini-delivered Huygens probe rests below and left of center,
after the most distant landing for a spacecraft from Earth.

Tomorrow's picture: black hole spin
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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2025 May 4
An artistic illustration of a black hole is shown. The black spot in
the center is the black hole, while the accretion disk of gas
surrounding it is shown in orange. Stars and the darkness of space is
shown near the top in the background. Please see the explanation for
more detailed information.

Spin up of a Supermassive Black Hole
Illustration Credit: Robert Hurt, NASA/JPL-Caltech

Explanation: How fast can a black hole spin? If any object made of
regular matter spins too fast -- it breaks apart. But a black hole
might not be able to break apart -- and its maximum spin rate is really
unknown. Theorists usually model rapidly rotating black holes with the
Kerr solution to Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, which
predicts several amazing and unusual things. Perhaps its most easily
testable prediction, though, is that matter entering a maximally
rotating black hole should be last seen orbiting at near the speed of
light, as seen from far away. This prediction was tested by NASA's
NuSTAR and ESA's XMM satellites by observing the supermassive black
hole at the center of spiral galaxy NGC 1365. The near light-speed
limit was confirmed by measuring the heating and spectral line
broadening of nuclear emissions at the inner edge of the surrounding
accretion disk. Pictured here is an artist's illustration depicting an
accretion disk of normal matter swirling around a black hole, with a
jet emanating from the top. Since matter randomly falling into the
black hole should not spin up a black hole this much, the NuSTAR and
XMM measurements also validate the existence of the surrounding
accretion disk.

Hole New Worlds: It's Black Hole Week at NASA!
Tomorrow's picture: planet lines
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply.
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